


That Greek Thing

by Luthien



Series: Works on a Grecian Theme [1]
Category: Friday's Child - Georgette Heyer, HEYER Georgette - Works
Genre: Across a crowded (ball)room, Christmas, Comedy, Eventual Requited Love, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Idiots in Love, Jealousy, M/M, Marriage, Minor Original Character(s), On Purpose, Past unrequited love, Pining, Post-Canon, Pregnancy, Regency, Road Trips, Romance, Romantic Comedy, THERE WAS ONLY ONE BED, The Season, What Happened After, a teensy bit of angst, elaborate descriptions of clothing, hedgerows, just generally idiots, obviously
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:28:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28146108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luthien/pseuds/Luthien
Summary: The tale of a memorable and eventful six months in the life of Mr Gilbert Ringwood, Esq., following the marriage of his friend, Lord Wrotham, to Miss Isabella Milborne in June, 1817.
Relationships: Anthony "Sherry" Sheringham/Hero Wantage, Gil Ringwood/Ferdy Fakenham, Isabella Milborne/George Wrotham
Series: Works on a Grecian Theme [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2094207
Comments: 44
Kudos: 83
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	That Greek Thing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [afterism](https://archiveofourown.org/users/afterism/gifts).



> Dear Afterism,
> 
> Thank you so very much for your wonderful prompts. They allowed me to write a story that I've had in the back of my mind for a very long time. I hope that you enjoy it!
> 
> Huge thanks to Samirant for audiencing and cheerleading all the way through the writing of this story, even though it's not her fandom, and to Damerel, my dear delight, and partner in crime when it comes to all things Heyer.

The marriage of George, Lord Wrotham, and Miss Isabella Milborne was widely regarded as the wedding of the Season, though it was not nearly so illustrious a match as might have been expected for a young lady known far and wide—in the gentleman's clubs at least—as the Incomparable. Lord Wrotham might be only a baron, and his estates sadly encumbered, but he was young and handsome, and cut a dashing and romantic figure—at least to the minds of the several young ladies who attended the wedding.

Miss Milborne was radiant, a state which is always to be hoped for in a bride, and looking more than usually beautiful in a very modish gown of primrose gauze over a white satin underdress, trimmed with a deep flounce of Honiton lace and surmounted with two tucks of byas satin ribbon and matching rosettes in evening primrose. White kid gloves, white satin slippers, and necklace, bracelets and earbobs all of pearl completed the ensemble. Her tawny hair was arranged in elaborate ringlets about her lovely face, showing to advantage against her alabaster skin, and adorned with a pearl aigrette above her brow and a garland of small yellow roses behind. Her brown eyes sparkled as she approached the altar, where her bridegroom waited.

Lord Wrotham watched her come to him, eyes fixed on her as if there were no other person present and his dark gaze so intense that by the time she reached his side his bride's cheeks were tinged with a rosy blush.

The wedding took place, naturally enough, at St George's, Hanover Square, and the small congregation was filled with, if not exactly the great and good, then still the very cream of the _ton_.

Lord and Lady Fakenham attended, together with their daughter, Lady Fairford, while their sons, the Honourable Marmaduke and the Honourable Ferdinand, sat nearby. Lord Wrotham's friend, Mr Ringwood, stood with him, providing both fortitude—until such time as the bride appeared in the doorway of the church on her father's arm—and, when the moment came, the all-important ring.

His grace the Duke of Severn was _not_ in attendance, having remained at Severn Towers in preference to coming to London for the Season this year, nor yet was Sir Montagu Revesby, whose presence would have been even more unwelcome.

Lord and Lady Sheringham sat near the front in a place of honour, in a pew just behind the dowager Lady Wrotham, who spent much of the ceremony dabbing her handkerchief to her eyes. Lady Sheringham was heard to exclaim, in tones slightly too loud for such a solemn, religious occasion, that dear Isabella was in her very best looks today, which was not to be wondered at, and her gown was all that was most becoming.

Lord Sheringham told her to hush, though in not very forbidding accents. She nodded to show that she heeded this, but continued in a lower tone, "It is all very grand, but I confess I still prefer _our_ wedding. Oh, Sherry, do you remember-?"

Sherry hushed his wife again, but admitted that he _did_ remember, and accompanied these words with a little squeeze of her hand and such a warm smile that Hero quite forgot where they were for a moment, and almost missed the part of the ceremony where the vicar asked if anyone present knew of any reason why the young couple should not be joined in holy matrimony. Fortunately, no one spoke up, and the wedding continued without any impediment, until Lord Wrotham and his lady were pronounced husband and wife at last.

Once outside the church, there was much kissing of cheeks (the bride's) and wringing of hands (the groom's) in congratulation, before the new Lady Wrotham was handed up into a smart barouche by her husband for the short journey to the Milborne townhouse, where the wedding breakfast was to be held.

The Milbornes stinted no more on the wedding breakfast than they had on the bridal clothes for their only child—which was to say, not at all—and it was a party of extremely well fed guests which waved the newly married couple on their way some time later. The guests afterwards called for their carriages, or simply went their separate ways on foot, and thus it was that Mr Ringwood, now happily free of all obligations, found himself accompanying the Honourable Ferdy to Tattersall's. There, Gil gave his opinion on a pair of sweet-goers that Ferdy had his eye on, after which they spent an enjoyable afternoon together, discussing the merits of this or that piece of horseflesh, before taking leave of each other—but not for long.

They met up again at White's where they took dinner, together with a few glasses of excellent burgundy, before repairing to the Castle Tavern at Holborn to while away the evening at the Daffy Club, as they had done many times before. However, this time, everything was not as it had been.

Once, there had been four of them, four young friends who had all arrived in town for the first time together, casting off the last vestiges of boyhood and bent on enjoying themselves. And enjoy themselves they had, for several, mostly merry years. Even Sherry's runaway marriage had not, at first, caused any real disruption to the way in which they went on. For a little while, Sherry's Kitten had seemed almost like one of the group herself when they gathered of an evening at the Sheringhams' cosy little house in Half Moon Street, though all of them took care to moderate their language when she was present.

It had been a deuced queer start to a marriage, though, even apart from the many scrapes that Hero had continually landed in whenever Sherry's attention had been, all too frequently, on something other than his wife, and of course the situation had not lasted. Gil had been the least surprised of all of them when poor little Kitten had arrived on his doorstep, clutching the drawing-room clock and her canary's cage, and declaring that she had nowhere else to go and she did not know what she would do.

In the face of her distress, Mr Ringwood, never a violent man, had found himself on the verge of wishing to call out his dear friend Sherry. He did not, in fact, do so, but he also did not tell Sherry that he had sent Hero to stay with his grandmother in Bath. He had hoped that losing his Kitten might cause his friend to do some hard thinking, and so it had indeed turned out. Mr Ringwood still shuddered slightly to recall the evening he had spent accompanying Lord Wrotham, driving hell-for-leather in search of Miss Milborne and Sir Montagu Revesby, while Ferdy had gone with Sherry, travelling at a no doubt equally spanking pace in pursuit of his wife, who had apparently run off with Mr Jasper Tarleton. It was a wonder that everything had turned out as well as it had, but by the time everyone had departed that insignificant little hostelry in some nameless village lying on the Radstock road outside Bath—after all of them quite unexpectedly meeting up there—Sherry and Kitten were reconciled and George and Isabella betrothed.

The Sheringhams now resided at Sheringham House in Grosvenor Square when they were in town, where they should have been from the first, and it was impossible for any fool to miss—here, Mr Ringwood cast a glance across the table at Ferdy—that they went about together smelling of April and May. Gil was happy for them, there could be no doubt of that, and happy also that George and the former Miss Milborne were, at long last, riveted, but he was also keenly aware that life as he had known it would never again be quite the same.

Mr Ringwood lifted his glass, and took a rather larger sip than was prudent of Blue Ruin. He winced slightly at the burn of the liquor, and then drained his glass.

Ferdy eyed him surprisingly shrewdly. "Penny for 'em, Gil?"

“Nothing worth mentioning, dear boy,” Gil assured him. “Join me in another glass?”

Ferdy obliged him without demur, so perhaps it was no great surprise that both young gentlemen were more than a trifle castaway when they departed the tavern some time later. They wandered along Piccadilly a short distance, arm in arm and weaving somewhat unsteadily as the ground rocked gently beneath their feet. Mr Fakenham then had the happy thought of calling up a hackney, which they bundled themselves into with some little difficulty. Gil settled back against the squabs and closed his eyes for the duration of the short journey home, while Ferdy listed slowly sideways on the seat beside him.

The hack came to a sudden halt and Mr Ringwood awoke from his pleasant doze with a start to find Ferdy's head pillowed upon his shoulder. Peering out of the window, he observed that they were outside his house in Stratton Street. Nudging Ferdy in the ribs to awaken him, Gil disentangled himself from his friend and alighted from the hack. He was preparing to bid Ferdy a good night and close the door behind him when Ferdy half-tumbled from the carriage, and, to Gil's vague surprise, landed on his feet on the cobblestones beside him.

"I'll just pay off the jarvey," he told Gil, and went to do so.

Gil had had some notion that Ferdy would continue in the hack the further mile to his parental abode in Cavendish Square, but since this was far from the first time that Ferdy had ended up on his sofa for the night he was not greatly surprised at this change of course.

The hackney drove off into the night, and Gil and Ferdy, once again arm in arm, negotiated the front steps and entered the house without mishap. As soon as they gained the parlour, Ferdy subsided onto the sofa without further ado, appearing to all intents and purposes to be ready to settle in for the night, and Gil knew that he would waste no time in stretching out there. However, Ferdy was still sitting upright when Gil returned with the carriage rug, and, as Gil bent to spread it over his friend's legs, their eyes met and held for just the slightest bit longer than they should have. Gil would have shrugged the whole thing off, pretended that it hadn't happened, and wished Ferdy good night, but Ferdy's eyes dropped to Gil's lips—and Gil discovered that he was quite weary of pretending.

He leaned in, one hand on Ferdy's shoulder to steady himself, and stopped Ferdy's mouth with his own in a brief, hard kiss. He drew back almost immediately, appalled at what he had just done. Anonymous encounters in certain discreet establishments were one thing, but Ferdy was his friend—or, at least, he had been until a moment ago. He took a step back.

However, Ferdy's sleepy blue gaze followed him, though now it was no longer so very sleepy. "Gil, dear boy," he said, leaning closer and pulling him back in, and then Mr Ringwood was the one who was being kissed.

He stumbled forward, landing awkwardly on the sofa beside Ferdy. Mr Fakenham, ever thoughtful, made room for him, and then they came together more easily, hands joining lips and tongues in seeking and finding until they were both left quite breathless. Gil stroked Ferdy through the fall of his breeches, watching as his fr- watching as Ferdy's eyes fell closed and he shuddered at Gil's touch.

"Come upstairs with me," Gil urged.

Ferdy opened his eyes. There was a slightly wild look to them, visible even in the light of a single branch of candles. It was an expression that Gil had never seen there in all the years that he had known Ferdy. After another moment, Ferdy blinked, and was himself again—if still a rather more flushed and breathless version of himself than Gil was used to seeing.

"Can't," Ferdy said, short and to the point.

Gil was aware of a pang of disappointment in his breast, but he put the best face he could on the situation and said, "Of course, dear fellow, if you had rather not, we will say no more of it."

Ferdy shook his head. "Not that. I mean, what I'm saying is: like to, very much. It's just…" He glanced meaningfully towards the stairs, before saying in a loud whisper, "What about your man?"

Gil relaxed immediately, or, at least, most of him did so. "Don't worry about Chilham. Knows everything, sees nothing," Gil assured him.

"Oh, well. That's all right then. If you're sure," Ferdy said, relieved.

"I'll tell him he won't be required until morning, and everything will be right and tight."

Silence fell between them as they looked at each other. Gil was the one to glance down at Ferdy's lips this time, and it was several minutes before he finally rang for Chilham.

Chilham was as prompt as always, and Gil only just had time to tuck the carriage rug over both himself and Ferdy as they sat primly side by side on the sofa before the valet appeared from some nether region of the house.

"That will be all for tonight, Chilham," Gil said.

"Very good, sir," Chilham said with a small bow. "Though might I suggest that I help you off with your boots first?"

"Good thought," Gil approved. "And Mr Fakenham's, too."

Chilham did not betray any surprise at this instruction by so much as a flicker of an eyelash, and, once he had provided this service to both gentlemen, he bowed again and disappeared back into the depths from whence he came.

Gil turned to Ferdy. "So, come upstairs with me now?" he asked.

"Happy to," Ferdy said, responding in much the same tones as he would if Gil had suggested that they take in a spot of luncheon at Boodles. But then he blinked, and that _look_ was back in his eyes.

Gil swallowed, and got to his feet before they ended up staying on the sofa for half the night.

They ascended the stairs in their stocking feet, and reached Gil's bedchamber without delay. Once the door was safely closed behind them, Gil helped Ferdy out of his coat and Ferdy returned the favour, laying both garments carefully over the back of a chair in the corner of the room. Neckcloths and waistcoats followed the coats onto the chair, and the two of them stood there in their shirtsleeves and shared a long, long look.

It seemed to Mr Ringwood then that it was as if time sped up, or slowed down, or perhaps did both at once. They landed side by side on the bed with a soft thump, mouths cleaving to each other again in a long, increasingly desperate kiss, as hands sought and found bare skin, and their legs tangled together below. Ferdy broke the kiss, but only to turn his attention to Gil's neck. Gil shuddered at the soft, wet slide of lips and tongue and the scrape of stubble against his throat, as Ferdy's hand slipped down to fumble with the buttons at the fall of Gil's breeches, and then Gil was quite laid bare to him—or so it seemed to Gil. He did not have the leisure to reflect on this thought too much, however, for Ferdy's hand closed around Gil's prick, and all of his attention was taken up with biting down on his lip and not crying out as Ferdy stroked and caressed him, all the time still kissing along his neck.

Gil succeeded in this aim, though his mind was a jumble of disconnected words that could not truly be dignified with the description of 'thoughts' by the time Ferdy's hand slipped off and away. Gil lifted himself on his elbows, hauled himself up against the pillows with a sigh, and closed his eyes—and then Ferdy's mouth was where his hand had lately been.

Gil groaned, and clutched at Ferdy's hair, and rocked his hips, arching up into the warm, wet welcome of this other sort of kiss. He cried out, long and loud and _hard_ , as he spent himself not long after, and fell back against the pillows, panting.

"Didn't know you had it in you, Ferdy," he said, admiringly, when he could catch his breath.

"Practice," Ferdy said modestly, moving up the bed to flop against the pillows beside Gil before adding, blushing, "Not that I mean… What I mean is: done this before, but wouldn't do it with just anyone, Gil!"

Gil couldn't help but wonder precisely who had provided Ferdy with so much practice, but he was by far too well-mannered to ask such a question, so instead he sat up and, according Ferdy a very particular sort of look, told him: "My turn, I think."

It was with some satisfaction that Mr Ringwood then proceeded to elicit from Ferdy a cry that he fancied was even louder than his own had been.

~*~

Gil awoke to the twin disagreeable sensations of a dry mouth and an aching head. He cocked open one eye, saw that Chilham had been in to draw back the curtains, and pulled the covers up higher, preparing to put off the moment that he must face the new day for as long as possible.

Beside him, Ferdy made some manner of not very intelligible sound under his breath and rolled over, taking the bedclothes with him.

"Ferdy!" Gil said, wincing at the sound of his own voice, and sat up. This was a mistake, as he became aware that he was not merely suffering from headache and a mouth that felt as dry as the desert. He was also quite nauseated.

"Mmmph," said Ferdy.

"Really, dear boy, only too happy to share, but you can't have _all_ the covers," Gil protested.

Ferdy rolled over, so that he was once again lying on his back, and blinked blearily. “Terribly sorry,” he said, letting go of the sheet.

Had Mr Ringwood given the matter any thought the night before, he might have expected there to be some awkwardness involved in waking up naked and in bed with one of one's best friends. And perhaps there would have been, had it been anyone other than Ferdy, and had his head not been aching quite so abominably.

Now, he grinned as he gazed down at Ferdy, who, if the pained expression on his countenance was anything to go by, was in an even worse state than Gil himself.

"We should get up," Gil said.

"Please don't speak so loudly," Ferdy begged, closing his eyes against the daylight.

Gil glanced over at the clock on the mantel. "It's already past ten o'clock," he said. He spoke in the same lowered tone as before.

Ferdy winced, and did not open his eyes. "You know I'm never at my best before noon," he said.

Gil _did_ know, but he also knew that they must needs get up. It was one thing for Chilham to find them in a state of _déshabillé_ —or really no _habillé_ at all—in bed together, but quite another if they were not both downstairs by the time anyone was likely to call.

"Breakfast awaits," he pointed out.

"Don't speak to me of breakfast," Ferdy said with a delicate shudder. His eyes remained firmly shut.

"Chilham must be mixing up his special remedy even as we speak."

This apparently innocent observation had the desired effect. Ferdy's eyes flew open. "Not that ghastly concoction with the raw egg in it?" he demanded.

"That's the one," Gil said. "He's bound to come in with it at any moment if we stay here."

"I'd sooner face daylight, _and_ breakfast," Ferdy declared, and sat up. A decidedly bilious look passed over his countenance and, groaning, he buried his face in his hands.

Grinning again, Gil reached over the side of the bed—and very nearly cast up his accounts. Wincing in turn, he retrieved Ferdy's breeches from the floor, where they had been summarily abandoned the previous night, and tossed them into their owner's lap.

"Get those on and find your shirt," he said heartlessly. "You can borrow one of my dressing-gowns while Chilham presses your coat."

Mr Fakenham's only response was another groan. He cut such a pathetic figure, head still in his hands as he slowly rocked back and forth, that Gil discovered in himself a wholly unexpected desire to wrap an arm around him and...

But he did not do so.

"I'm getting up," he said and, throwing back the covers, put words into action.

He was more than half-dressed by the time Ferdy finally arose.

~*~

They arrived in the breakfast parlour just in time. No sooner had Ferdy declined the offer of a dish of soused herrings with a barely repressed shudder, instead taking a simple roll of bread and pouring himself a large tankard of ale, than there was a loud hammering on the front door.

Both young gentlemen winced, while Chilham went to see who it might be.

To no one's surprise, "it" turned out to be Sherry.

"What, you still at breakfast?" he asked Gil by way of greeting, tossing hat and gloves onto a chair, and pulling up another to the table.

"Not _still_. Haven't started yet," Mr Fakenham explained, striving for accuracy.

The Viscount turned to consider him, as if noticing Ferdy's presence for the first time. "What you doing here, Ferdy, and in that deuced purple dressing-gown again? No, don't tell me. Daffy Club last night?" he asked, eyeing his pale-faced cousin knowingly.

"Daffy Club," Ferdy confirmed, with perfect, if incomplete, truth.

Gil stared down at his plate, glad that his neckcloth concealed most of the delicate flush spreading up along his neck and into his cheeks.

"Glad I found you here, in any event. I need your help, both of you."

Since both Mr Ringwood and Mr Fakenham remembered very well what had transpired the last time Sherry had burst in on them at breakfast and requested their assistance, they regarded him with some foreboding.

"Not… not after another marriage licence are you, old boy?" Gil asked tentatively.

"What the devil should I need a marriage licence for? I'm already married!"

"Know that," Ferdy said. "Came to the wedding."

"Forget about marriage licences, and about my dashed wedding. Got nothing to do with that! Well, except that it's to do with Kitten."

Mr Ringwood blenched, and, reaching for the potted hare, returned his attention to his plate. "Not wishful to intrude on anything that lies between a man and his wife," he murmured, refraining from adding the word "again" and hoping very much that his friend would either get on with whatever he had to say or go away.

"Private matter," Ferdy agreed.

"Oh, it's nothing like that," Sherry exclaimed, as both of his friends slumped a little at the table in relief. "Just need to find Kitten a present. She's not been feeling quite the thing lately."

"Nothing amiss with Lady Sherry I trust?" Gil asked, looking up in quick concern, for he was very fond of Hero.

"She says not," Sherry said, but he frowned. "Still seemed a trifle out of sorts to me these last weeks. Everything just a touch _off_ , somehow, and then this morning she told me she'd rather stay in bed than go to the Pantheon Bazaar!"

This dire pronouncement caused both of Sherry's friends to stare at him in shock.

"Must be sickening with something," Mr Fakenham observed. "Not at all like Kitten to forgo the chance of a shopping expedition."

Mr Ringwood agreed entirely with this sentiment but rather wished that Ferdy had not put it into words, for the Viscount's frown deepened, and he said, in quite another voice, "There _is_ something wrong, I tell you. I just wish I knew what it was!"

"Perhaps buy her a present to help put her in better spirits?" Gil suggested.

Sherry nodded. "Yes, that was my idea. I'm just not sure precisely what." He looked from Gil to Ferdy in hope. "But not another curst canary," he added, eyeing Gil balefully.

"Wasn't going to suggest any such thing," Gil assured him, racking his brains to think of what sort of gift might be appropriate for a very young wife in need of cheering up.

Ferdy was the one to come to the rescue. His understanding might be no more than moderate in any situation, but no one disputed that he was possessed of exquisite taste. "Jewellery," he said, decisively.

"I thought maybe a fan-" Sherry began.

Ferdy shook his head. "Jewellery," he repeated. "And sapphires, what's more."

"I'm having a diamond parure made for her birthday," Sherry said.

"All the more reason to give her sapphires this time," Gil pointed out.

Sherry considered this for a moment. "Yes, good thought," he said. He got to his feet. "I'll be off to Rundell & Bridge in Ludgate Hill," he said, naming the goldsmiths to his Royal Highness the Prince Regent. "Care to accompany me?"

Gil surveyed the contents of the breakfast table without enthusiasm, and then looked inquiringly at Ferdy.

Ferdy nodded, took a deep draught of ale from his tankard and, thus fortified, rose from the table. "Where's Chilham with my coat?" he inquired, looking around.

"Right here, sir," said Chilham, appearing as if out of nowhere with the required item of clothing before Gil could do more than think of ringing for him. He proceeded to help Ferdy out of Gil's dressing-gown and into his coat, and by the time this was done Sherry was already champing at the bit to be gone.

And so, pausing only to put on hats and gloves, the three young gentlemen left the house— without anyone having said a word about what had occurred there the night before.

~*~

Their shopping trip was a success, with Sherry even going so far as to declare it an unbridled success. The Viscount walked out of Rundell & Bridge carrying a neat package containing a delicate sapphire and diamond necklace together with a matching bracelet and elegant drop earrings, which had met Ferdy's exacting standards.

Ferdy suggested dining at Limmer's Hotel to celebrate, but Sherry declined, anxious to get back to Kitten and see how she was faring. He let his friends down from his carriage in Conduit Street, and then bade them goodbye before continuing on to Grosvenor Square.

Gil and Ferdy were left to take luncheon alone. Once again, it occurred to Gil that there might be some awkwardness attached to their dealings after the unexpected turn of events the night before, but once again Mr Fakenham acted as if all was as usual—and so, Gil supposed that in all important respects it was. After a slap-up meal including turtle soup, a spatchcocked chicken and sirloin of beef, as well as several glasses of burgundy, they spent the afternoon at the races. There, Ferdy hit a lucky winning streak by the simple expedient of placing his money only on horses with two white socks, which left him rather more plump in the pocket than Mr Ringwood, who had chosen his bets based on his quite expert knowledge of the form of several horses. He informed Ferdy that he could pay for the hackney home.

After a companionable journey of several miles, the hack drew up outside Mr Ringwood's house in Stratton Street, and this time, unlike the previous night, Ferdy did not follow him out of it. Instead he waved Gil goodbye, and set off down the street in the hackney again in the direction of Cavendish Square.

Mr Ringwood went inside and upstairs to his bedchamber. The bed had been made, his personal effects straightened, yesterday's clothing spirited off somewhere to be seen to by Chilham. Everything looked exactly as it always did. If not for the very vivid memories of the night before, which Gil could not seem to shake, it was as if Ferdy had never been there at all.

He was engaged with a party of friends for dinner at White's that night, and while the food was all that could be asked for, the company congenial, and it showed every sign of turning into a most convivial evening, he did not accompany the others when they moved on to Watier's, and instead took himself home.

He sat by the fire with a glass of brandy for some time, staring into the flames and not sure what to think, or even sure of what he _did_ think. It was well after midnight when at last he went up to bed, and slept the night through alone.

~*~

Mr Ringwood did not see Ferdy or Sherry again until the following evening, when they all attended Lady Sefton's ball in Berkeley Square. It was already well on the way to being deemed 'a sad crush'—the ultimate accolade for any society hostess—when Gil found Sherry in the ballroom, watching from the sidelines as Kitten danced the quadrille with some young blade or other. Each time the dance brought them together, she exchanged a few words with her partner, once even letting out a small gurgle of laughter.

"Kitten looking in good spirits tonight," Mr Ringwood observed.

"Yes," Sherry agreed, with a slight, somewhat abstracted smile. His eyes were still on his wife.

They fell silent, both watching as the dance came to an end. The dancers bowed and curtseyed to each other. Kitten bade adieu to her partner with what Mr Ringwood knew to be her usual pretty manners, and then she came to join her husband. As she approached, fanning herself vigorously with a very elegant ivory _brisé_ fan, Gil noted that she was wearing the sapphire and diamond set that Sherry had purchased for her the previous day. Her ball gown was a veritable cloud of white silk gauze, embroidered with forget-me-nots in blue and silver thread, which glinted slightly as she moved, and the sparkle of the diamonds together with the darker glitter of the sapphires provided the perfect finishing touch.

"Gil!" she exclaimed, hurrying over upon espying him standing with Sherry. "How good it is to see you. Are you planning to dance? If I had known I should have reserved a set for you," she said with a mischievous smile, for she was very well aware that Mr Ringwood was not by inclination a dancer, though he could acquit himself tolerably well on the dancefloor if so required.

"No, just about to seek out the card room," he told her. "You engaged for the next set, Kitten?" he added, for he had noticed that the smile had left her face and she looked suddenly weary. "Might not hurt to sit one out. It's dev- I mean, it's dashed hot in here tonight." This was no less than the truth, for apart from the great crowd of people present, the ballroom was lit with two great chandeliers, together accounting for what must be several hundred wax candles all blazing with light and heat, and it was a warm night besides, the spring weather having now made way for summer.

"Oh, no," said Hero, smiling again, though to Mr Ringwood's eyes she still looked a trifle wan, despite the heat of the room. "I must on no account sit the next dance out, for it is a waltz and I have promised it to Sherry."

"I don't mind," Sherry said. He was regarding her with a look of unmistakable concern. "Let me get you a glass of iced lemonade and we will find somewhere out of the way to sit together."

Hero's face fell. "Of- of course, Sherry, if you desire it," she said, "but I did so wish to dance with _you_ tonight."

"Kitten." Sherry took her hand and said in a low, caressing voice that had Mr Ringwood assiduously polishing his quizzing-glass and feeling his presence suddenly to be decidedly _de trop_ , "Of course we shall dance if that is what you wish.”

Her smile returned as she looked up at him—a single teardrop hovering tremulously on her lashes—and then past him. “Why, here is Ferdy!” she cried.

Mr Ringwood turned around quickly to find that she was indeed correct: here _was_ Ferdy. Mr Fakenham was making his way across the room to join them, dressed with great elegance in black satin knee breeches, striped stockings, and shoe and knee buckles that positively glittered, along with a diamond pin in his artfully arranged neckcloth, a waistcoat of white watered silk, and a waisted coat with exceptionally long tails, unmistakably of Weston's tailoring, which suited his willowy form very well. Unaccountably, Gil swallowed, his throat suddenly dry. He had seen Mr Fakenham in full evening dress many times before, of course, but somehow it was as if he were now seeing Ferdy for the first time. It was certainly the first time he had noticed how well the form-fitting breeches showed off the shape of Ferdy's long legs, or the eye-catching manner in which the snugly fitted coat displayed the breadth of Ferdy's shoulders. Perhaps it was simply because Gil now knew what it was to touch the bare skin that lay beneath. Perhaps…

Regardless, no one could dispute that Ferdy looked very well in his finery tonight.

He reached his friends, and, after greeting them, informed Hero that the white silk was a happy choice, and that she looked most becoming in it.

Hero's smile was as brilliant as the jewels she wore as she thanked him for this compliment. "And do you see the sapphires that Sherry has given me?" she went on. “Are they not beautiful?”

“Indeed. Thought so m’self when I-“ Ferdy broke off, wincing slightly as Gil trod on his foot.

“Terribly sorry, old boy,” Gil said, but with a hard look at Ferdy, which seemed after a long moment to penetrate, for Ferdy eventually finished, in only mild confusion, “...when _Sherry_ chose them.”

The orchestra struck a chord, indicating that it was time for the dancers to take their places for the next set. The Viscount held his hand out to his wife, which she took, and then he led her out onto the floor. His two friends remained there, watching for a little time, as the music started and the dance began.

The waltz was not now considered as scandalous as it had been when first introduced into London ballrooms some years before, but it remained a dance like no other, for two persons only, and was all that was romantic and intimate. The floor was filled with dancers, and as the various couples circled and twirled about the room, Gil could not help but wonder how they managed to avoid running into each other and coming to grief. Sherry, however, seemed quite oblivious of everyone else as he danced, looking down into Hero's face in a way that reminded Gil forcibly of the expression on George's countenance several days before as he had watched his bride come down the aisle to join him at the altar.

Mr Ringwood allowed himself a moment's quiet self-congratulation at a job well done in helping his friends to their current happy marital states, and decided that now was as good a time as any to make a strategic exit before their hostess had the chance to bear down on him and introduce him to some lonely damsel in need of a dancing partner.

"Card room?" Ferdy suggested, as if reading Gil's thoughts—or perhaps it was merely Gil's face that he read so well.

"Card room," Gil agreed with a firm nod and, turning away from the floor, they began threading their way through the assembled ranks of the upper ten thousand to the door of the ballroom.

However, they were doomed never to reach the card room, or even the door, for before they were more than halfway across the room a shout rang out, followed by a cry of alarm.

Gil turned swiftly as the music faltered, in time to see several of the waltzers indeed running into each other, just as he had feared, though this was mostly because some of them had come to a complete halt, and were staring at…

"Good God," Mr Ringwood ejaculated, feeling a little like Moses at the Red Sea as the crowd parted briefly before him to reveal the sight of Hero lying quite unconscious in her husband's arms. An instant later, the view of his friends was obscured as many of the other guests milled about in alarm, but not before Gil had seen the look of terror—there could be no other word for it—on Sherry's face.

He made his way back to Sherry and Kitten as quickly as he was able, with Ferdy at his heels.

"Kitten, Kitten!" Sherry was saying anxiously as he cradled her in his arms, and Gil was more than a little relieved to see Hero stir and her eyelids flutter even as he reached them. He was aware of Ferdy behind him, speaking curtly to the various interested parties being so ill-bred as to goggle openly at the spectacle Kitten and Sherry presented:

"Nothing to see here. Overcome by the heat, that's all!"

Meanwhile, Gil racked his brains as to what best to do. They needed to get Kitten out of the ballroom before anything else, that was plain, but how best to do so while causing the least stir possible? But before many moments had passed the matter was quite taken out of his hands by the arrival of their hostess, who wasted no time in waving her vinaigrette under Hero's nose. Hero coughed, and opened her eyes properly, and Sherry looked ready to sink into the floor with relief. Once Hero was on her feet again, though with her husband's arm still supporting her while he asked anxiously how she did, Lady Sefton, in the quiet but firm voice befitting one who was not just a leader of London society but also one of the lady patronesses of Almack's, directed Sherry to help his wife to a nearby antechamber where she might recover in relative peace and quiet, away from inquisitive eyes and ears.

Lady Sefton shooed the few occupants of the antechamber away, and, once Kitten was settled on a sofa, commanded not just Gil and Ferdy but Sherry as well to leave Hero in her capable hands.

"Your wife will be perfectly fine, Lord Sheringham, unless I much mistake the matter," she assured Sherry when he tried to protest. "Leave her with me for just a very few moments, for there is something I wish to say to her—and, I fancy, something she may wish to tell me."

Sherry tried to protest again, but her ladyship would brook no interference, and he was compelled to wait outside with Gil and Ferdy.

"She'll be fine," Ferdy told his pale-faced cousin. "Lady Sefton must know what she's talking about. Stands to reason. Female, you know!"

Since Sherry looked ready to plant Ferdy a facer right there in the ballroom, Gil quickly intervened. "Ferdy's right," he told Sherry bluntly, and took a step back as his friend turned his ferocious scowl on him in turn. "Could have phrased it better, but he's right. Lady Sefton knows better than we do how to deal with such matters, so we should let her. Once she's sorted things out with Kitten, you can take her home and cosset her to your heart's content if you're wishful to do so!"

"Take Kitten home, not Lady Sefton," Ferdy put in, in case there should be some doubt.

Sherry ignored this, and held Gil's gaze for a long moment. Then, letting his breath out in a sigh, his shoulders slumped and he said, "Yes, you're right, but I can't help but worry."

"Most natural thing in the world, old boy," Gil assured him, clapping him on the shoulder. "She's your wife, after all. Now, let me get you a glass of champagne," he added, beckoning at a passing footman.

"Just the thing," Ferdy agreed, taking a glass of champagne for himself.

It was not many minutes before the door to the antechamber opened again and Lady Sefton emerged from the room. "You may go in to see your wife now, Sheringham," her ladyship said, but Sherry, caring nothing for good manners or, indeed, anything save his Kitten, was already pushing past her.

Luckily, Lady Sefton was a good-natured lady, and chose to be amused rather than offended by this unmannerly conduct. However, she held up a hand when Mr Ringwood and Mr Fakenham made to follow Sherry. "Not you gentlemen," she said. "Not just yet. Lord Sheringham will no doubt call for you if and when he is ready." And, this admonition delivered, she made her way back into the ballroom to see to her other guests.

Gil watched her retreating back, then turned to Ferdy, who was already looking around for another glass of champagne.

They waited, striving to appear unconcerned about anything and everything as they stood guard on the door, and exchanging the occasional observation about the heat of the room, the prospects of a certain horse at Newmarket—here, Mr Ringwood stopped to mention that he did not know how many socks the horse possessed and he would not tell Ferdy even if he did—the likelihood of rain falling on the morrow, all while Gil cast surreptitious eyes at the closed door and Ferdy continued to apply most of his attention to his latest glass of champagne.

Several more minutes passed before the door opened again and Sherry appeared. The expression on his face was not reassuring.

"Everything all right with Lady Sherry?" Mr Ringwood asked, fearing the worst.

Ferdy drained his glass and, stopping only to place it carefully in a nearby _jardinière_ , echoed Mr Ringwood's question.

"She's increasing," Sherry said blankly. "I can't quite believe it. Hero, she's… There's going to be a child. I… We'll be _parents_ , by Christmas. I can't quite believe it," he said again, and yet, this final statement seemed to shake him from his daze, and a smile touched the corners of his mouth. From there, it broadened until he was standing there, grinning foolishly at his friends.

"Congratulations, dear old boy," said Gil, stepping forward to shake him warmly by the hand.

Ferdy also offered his congratulations, but eyed his cousin with a puzzled frown. "Don't know why you should be surprised. Stands to reason," he said. "Bound to happen sooner or later now that you're married. Properly, I m-" He broke off as Mr Ringwood trod hard on his foot for the second time that evening.

Something then occurred to Mr Ringwood. "By Christmas, you say?" he asked. He did not know how it was possible to frame the question that he truly wished to ask in a delicate way, so he merely gave the Viscount an encouraging look, and waited.

His friend did not disappoint him. "Kitten's known for weeks, or at least strongly suspected. That maid of hers, Maria…" He broke off, apparently realising the impropriety of what he had been about to say. "In any event, she's been apprehensive of telling me, because I'd told her that I enjoyed its being just the two of us together these past months! Afraid I would object that there will be three of us instead of two! If that isn’t just like her." He shook his head at this. "Now I must needs get her home and out of this crush of people."

"Of course," Gil said. "All well with her now, though?" He glanced past Sherry, for there was still no sign of Hero.

Sherry nodded. "She's feeling much more the thing now. Just wanted a moment to compose herself before-" He broke off as his wife appeared in the doorway. She was still a little pale, and there was the faint suggestion of redness around her eyes, but she looked almost back to her usual self. "Kitten," he said, taking her hand.

"I feel so very foolish," she said, smiling up at Sherry.

" _I'm_ the foolish one," he told her. "I should have seen…"

"Time enough for all that later," Gil put in.

"Get Kitten home," Ferdy added.

"Lord, yes," Sherry agreed. "Take my arm, Kitten."

She did as he asked, and the four of them made their way sedately around the ballroom, stopping to bow at acquaintances and exchange a few words along the way, until they finally made it to the door, where they took leave of their hostess. In hardly more than a few more minutes, they were out of the front door, where Sherry's carriage was already waiting. There, Mr Ringwood and Mr Fakenham congratulated Sherry once more and kissed Hero's cheek, before they all wished each other a good night.

Once they had waved Sherry and Hero off on their way along the very short distance to their home in Grosvenor Square, Gil turned to Ferdy. "Have anything planned for the rest of the evening, old boy?" he asked, for the night was still quite young.

"Limmer's and a few glasses of daffy?" Ferdy suggested. "Feel the need of a strong drink after all that," he added, as if he had not recently fortified himself with two glasses of champagne.

Mr Ringwood was silent for a moment, before he said, "Or perhaps a glass or two of cognac at my house?" It was now just over two years since Waterloo, and French cognac was obtainable again without the need to resort to the assistance of smugglers along the coast.

Ferdy also went silent, and Gil wondered very hard if he himself was about to take the role of the fool. He was assailed with the memory of his first sight of Ferdy this evening. Just for an instant, Ferdy had looked so very _unlike_ the friend that Gil had known so long. A stray line from something he'd once read—had it been at school?—had come into his head: _a beautiful, desir’able creature_. Such a sentiment should not have applied to Ferdy—should _never_ have applied to Ferdy—and yet, in that moment it had been all that Gil could think of. That, and the memory of breathless heat and the pounding of his heart as they had reached for each other.

"Why not?" Ferdy agreed, turning his head to look properly at Gil, his features suddenly stark and clear in the light from the gaslamp above them. There was a faint, affable smile on his lips and the look in his blue eyes was as guileless as ever. Ferdy was still as undeniably… Ferdy as he had ever been.

It should have been reassuring, and yet Gil shocked himself once again as he discovered in himself the wish to kiss that smile right off Ferdy's lips, to make him groan and curse and cry out.

Instead, he forced a smile to his own lips, and offered Ferdy his arm. They set off for Stratton Street together, arm in arm, as they had done so many times before. If everything about the journey seemed different this time, it was certainly no fault of Ferdy's. It did not take them long to reach their destination; Mr Ringwood knew that very well, and yet it felt like an age had passed by the time they ascended the front steps of his house at last. It seemed as if a further age passed as they waited at the door and Chilham let them in, and Gil informed him that he would not be needing him for the rest of the evening.

"Very good, sir," Chilham said, bowing primly before withdrawing.

Gil turned to Ferdy, right there in the hallway, and, framing Ferdy's face between his hands, pushed him back against the wall and kissed him in a manner that was not prim at all. Ferdy let out a low, surprised grunt, but he did not pull away. His hands fluttered at Gil's shoulders a moment before slipping up into Gil's hair, fingers digging in hard and suddenly desperate as he drew Gil in closer and kissed him back.

"I've wanted to do that ever since I first saw you this evening in those damned satin breeches," Gil said, his voice rough and strange to his own ears, when he drew back a very little, some indefinable time later. "Kiss you—and more." His hand was already at Ferdy's hip, and now Gil slipped it across the front of his breeches to cup him through said satin, rubbing not so very gently up and down to emphasise his point.

Ferdy let out a deep, heart-felt groan, and clutched at him, pulling Gil hard against him. "Did you really?" he gasped. "Me?" His mildly astonished tone was familiar in a way that everything else wasn't, and, oddly, that was what made Gil finally throw all caution to the wind.

"You," Gil averred, and kissed him again, matching the strokes of his hand to the deep thrusts of his tongue. All awareness of the world around them was concentrated in the here and now of their moving together, rocking back and forth, the soft thump of Ferdy's back hitting the wall behind him, the rattle of a picture frame, the feel of the satin growing damp against Gil's palm—and it was his turn to groan. He felt Ferdy's hands fumbling for the buttons at the fall of his breeches, and then the fall… fell—and so did Gil. He fell to his knees in front of Ferdy, greedy for more than just the taste of Ferdy's mouth, taking the length of him, hot and hard and _ready_ into his own mouth, even as he reached for the fall of his breeches and thrust one hand down inside. He was just as ready, and felt like a callow youth again a bare moment later, shuddering and spending himself in his breeches, as Ferdy cried out above him a second before the sudden warm gush of his release flooded Gil's mouth.

Afterwards, Ferdy slid down the wall, panting, and landed on the floor beside Gil. "Shouldn't have done that," he said, sounding slightly breathless.

Beside him, Gil went quite still.

"Not at all the thing to do it up against the wall in the hallway," Ferdy continued. "Anyone might have walked in on us. Chilham, the kitchen maid, _anyone_."

Gil begged pardon, as confusion and acute embarrassment warred within his breast. "I'm sorry," he said, "I don't know what came over me. I hope that we can still-"

"Bedchamber wall next time," Ferdy said decisively. "That's the ticket. Private." And then he added, after a moment’s consideration, “Not sure what business the kitchen maid would have in the front hallway, though. Parlour, yes, seeing to the ashes in the fireplace, but not the hallway.”

Gil stared at him, there in the dimly lighted hallway, and then, because—and hardly for the first time tonight—he found that he was quite unable to stop himself, he began to laugh.

"Oh, Ferdy," he said, amused and fond. "We should most definitely keep to the bedchamber next time." He leaned over and kissed Ferdy on the lips again, very softly, before getting to his feet and then helping Ferdy up.

They took the decanter of cognac with them up to his bedchamber, and that night when Mr Ringwood slept at last, he did not sleep alone.

~*~

Lady Sefton’s ball had been the last of the great events of the Season, and over the next few weeks, as summer took hold and the various families returned to their country estates, London began to thin of company. The Sheringhams were not among them, however, and nor were Mr Ringwood and the Honourable Ferdy. Neither the Viscount nor Mr Ringwood suffered any further disturbing revelations during this period, and things settled down into a recognisable, not to say comfortable, pattern. Gil and Ferdy saw somewhat less of Sherry, now wrapped up in his own affairs at Grosvenor Square, but they saw more of each other—in every sense. Mr Fakenham did not spend every night in Stratton Street, but he was there often enough that when the Viscount intruded on their breakfast yet again one morning in July he was moved to exclaim:

“You here again, Ferdy? If I didn’t know better, I’d think you lived here.”

"The only reason you know how often Ferdy's been here lately is because you've been here yourself," Gil pointed out with some asperity.

"Yes, but not for breakfast," the Viscount retorted, pulling up a chair and reaching for the jug of ale.

"How is Lady Sherry doing today? In good health, I trust," Gil asked, changing the subject to something likely to distract Sherry from his current train of thought—as, indeed, it did.

Sherry smiled, that very sweet smile of his that had won for him so many well-wishers even when he was at his most trying, and said, "Much better now. In fact, she's in high spirits. Planning to pay a morning call on Bella when I left her."

"What, they've returned from their honeymoon?" Gil asked.

"The day before yesterday. I met George in Jackson's yesterday morning."

"And how is he?"

"Also in high spirits," Sherry said with a grin. "I knew marriage would be just the thing for him."

"Good thing," Ferdy said, at last contributing his mite to the conversation. "Poor fellow couldn't go on forever going around trying to call everyone out. Not good for anyone."

"You should try it. Marriage, I mean," Sherry suggested, somewhat mischievously, and grinned again at the look of dawning horror on his cousin's face.

"Not in the petticoat line," Ferdy protested. "Dash it, you know that, Sherry. Much happier as I am."

Mr Ringwood looked down at his plate for a moment before turning his attention to the dish of buttered eggs.

~*~

When the four friends and, in Sherry's and George's cases, their wives, met up at a rout party the following evening, it was clear to all that Sherry had spoken no less than the truth. George, always ridiculously handsome and romantical, had now added a startlingly brilliant smile to his repertoire of habitual expressions. It came to his lips whenever his gaze fell on his new wife, which was often. The familiar look of fiery passion in his eyes had not been quenched by his transition to the married state but, if anything, increased.

"Ah, marriage," he said, before Gil could ask how he did. He sighed, rather theatrically. "It is truly the most sublime of all possible situations—if a man is so lucky as to be married to one who is, well, Incomparable." He turned his new, dazzling smile on Isabella, who smiled back, and silence fell on the group, even while the other guests chattered and laughed around them.

Gil polished his quizzing-glass for a moment and, when no one else ventured to say anything, cleared his throat, and observed, "Might rain tomorrow, do you think?"

But Lord Wrotham was not so easily to be deterred. "I can only wish for my friends the same degree of happiness that I am privileged to possess," he declared in throbbing accents, with another long look at his wife. "Have you ever considered, Gil-?"

Mr Ringwood said hastily that he had not, and wondered if there was something in the air his friends had been breathing lately—or, quite possibly, the wine they had been drinking. In the meanwhile, Ferdy looked from George to Gil and back again and remained quite mute.

However, he was not mute at all later that evening as he and Gil retired to the bedchamber in the Stratton Street house. They fell onto the bed together, as was their wont, but, after they had shared their first long kiss and Gil reached up to free Ferdy from the constraints of his neckcloth, Ferdy did not immediately move to return the favour, but instead lay there, an expression on his face that in anyone else Gil would not have hesitated to designate as 'thoughtful'.

"What is it? Gil asked without preamble, for he had become quite versed in the ways of Ferdy's every expression, and this was a new one.

"Just wondering something," Ferdy admitted, but he did not elaborate. Instead, he frowned, and fell silent.

"And that something might be…?" Gil prompted gently after some little while, when the silence between them showed no signs of ending.

Ferdy let out a sigh, and bit his lip, and frowned some more.

"Ferdy?" Gil asked, becoming concerned now.

"The first time you kissed me," Ferdy said slowly, "was the night of George's wedding. Didn't occur to me at the time, but it crossed my mind tonight. Made me wonder."

"Made you wonder what?" Gil said, quite mystified.

"You never kissed me before. Never thought you wanted to before." He fell silent, swallowed, and turned his head against the covers so that he was looking Gil fully in the eyes. "George hadn't ever been married before, either. Occurred to me, tonight… Thought maybe that you…"

"Ah. You thought that maybe I liked 'em dark and dashing?" Gil suggested.

"Yes. That," Ferdy said gratefully.

"Well, I don't," Gil said. "Always liked fair hair and blue eyes best." He watched, hating a little to see the way Ferdy's blue eyes brightened at this intelligence, and reached up to push back a lock of Ferdy's sandy-coloured hair, which had fallen down onto his forehead. Gil bit his lip, just as Ferdy had done a moment ago, but forced himself to go on. He owed Ferdy the truth, if nothing else. "Might have been a bit fonder of Sherry than I should have been, once upon a time," he admitted.

"Oh," Ferdy said, the light in his eyes fading.

"Not any more!" Gil hastened to add. "Got over it long ago. Couldn't be happier for him and Kitten. Did everything I could to bring them about, if you remember."

Ferdy nodded. "I remember. Remember it _well_ ," he said, with some feeling.

Gil regarded him silently for a moment, and then bridged the short distance between them to kiss him. Ferdy allowed the kiss, but he was not as quick to return it as he usually was. When at last he did, it was so forcefully that Gil ended up on his back, Ferdy lying half across him with one leg slung over both of Gil's.

Ferdy lifted his head, and grinned suddenly. "I remember something else. Remember that Greek thing coming after Monty that night at the inn," he said, the recollection of his glee at Sir Montagu's undoing bringing a little of the lost brightness back into his eyes.

"Nemesis," Gil reminded him gently.

"Yes, that's it. Never could remember the dashed thing's name. Just, you know, _Greek_." He emphasised these words with a slight thrust of his hips, which served to provide Mr Ringwood with a very good idea of the direction in which the current situation would likely be heading before much longer.

However, it also served to remind him of something else. "Get off me, Ferdy, if you would. I have something to show you," he said. He mitigated this peremptory request by leaning up and pressing a hard kiss to Ferdy's lips. "Soon," he promised, "but first let me show you."

Ferdy obligingly rolled off him and to one side, and Gil got up off the bed. He went over to the heavy, old-fashioned mahogany dresser and, to Ferdy's obvious great surprise, took out a book. He brought it over to the bed for Ferdy to see. It was a large book, bound in red morocco and with folio-sized pages, and he dropped it onto the bed with a soft thump before opening it to the second or third page.

Ferdy looked at what was shown on the page, and his eyes grew wide.

"It's a book of reproductions of artworks taken from Ancient Greek urns," Gil explained.

Ferdy leaned closer, examining the drawing carefully. "Very rum customers, those Greeks," he pronounced after a while. "I shouldn't care to come face to face with such a thing in m'mother's drawing room. Glad she runs mainly to scrolls and acanthus leaves. Her urns, I mean," he added obligingly in explanation.

"It occurred to me that we might take some inspiration from the pictures," Gil said, and willed himself not to blush. "Perhaps try this position?"

Ferdy considered the question. "How would one…" he began, tilting his head slightly, as if the different angle might provide enlightenment. "Oh, I see. He has his-"

"Yes," Gil said.

Ferdy looked up from the book, and for once there was no confusion clouding his gaze. He reached very purposefully for Gil's neckcloth, and wasted no time in removing it. Before long, the rest of their clothes had joined the neckcloth on the bedroom floor. Their boots provided the most difficulty, but eventually Ferdy pulled Gil's second boot free, and it went sailing over his shoulder to land on the floor with a thump.

And then he reached for Gil himself, just as purposefully.

Gil had had some vague thought that he would take the active position—was that how the Romans had put it? Though introducing Romans as well as Greeks into the picture seemed foolhardy to say the least—but it was immediately clear that Ferdy had other ideas.

Later, Gil was not even sure how he got there, except that one minute he was sitting on the edge of the bed and the next he was lying back and Ferdy was kissing him hard and rolling him over so that he was face-down, head pillowed against his arm. He heard the soft pop of the stopper leaving the glass bottle, the one that contained the oil and which now always stayed on the mahogany stand by the bed. He heard the quiet slap of skin against skin as Ferdy's hands came together, and knew that he was rubbing oil between them, warming it before…

The first touch of Ferdy's fingers on the back of his thigh made him gasp, even though he had been waiting for it, made him hard; the firm, purposeful stroke of one finger, then two, then three together, Ferdy's hands, both of them, moving up and down along his thigh, slippery and slick against his skin, made him gasp some more, made him even harder, made him push back into Ferdy's touch, made him _want_ , so badly that he was shaking with it by the time Ferdy leaned forward and whispered, "Hands and knees," into his ear.

Gil felt strangely helpless but to do anything but to heed this request, to _obey_ , as Ferdy moved into place behind him, and then Ferdy's hands were grasping Gil's hips as his prick _thrust_ between Gil's thighs, hard and slippery and exactly what Gil needed. Ferdy pulled back and thrust again, leaning forward so that he was against Gil's back. They were moving together, together, together, and Gil was shaking, he was shaking, and Ferdy was there, arms coming around him, holding him close, his hand _right there_ on Gil's prick, just where he needed it, his strokes firm and sure while Gil was desperate and urgent, and _thrust_ , again and again, the sharp, bright sting of Ferdy's teeth against his back as he thrust again, once, hard, and Gil could feel Ferdy pulsing, spending himself between his thighs, the warm splash of his release against Gil's skin, and Ferdy's voice, hoarsely calling, "Gil! _Gil!_ "

Gil convulsed as sensation took him, overwhelming him in a haze of white heat, lightning zig-zagging before his closed eyes, and all thought left him save the knowledge that he was not alone.

He had to kiss him, afterwards. He couldn't not. He pushed Ferdy back against the pillows and, yes, he _ravished_ his lips, over and over, couldn't stop even though this was the point when they were meant to be replete and languorous and ready to sleep, when it was meant to be over.

Gil didn't want it ever to be over. The force of that desire shocked him. He didn't know what it meant, except that he was grateful that it was Ferdy for whom he felt it. Ferdy was safe. Ferdy was… Ferdy.

Eventually the kisses came to an end, Ferdy pushing Gil gently back from him. He was smiling, though, Gil saw when at last he opened his eyes. Gil smiled back, and in that instant knew that now he could rest. They wiped themselves off and pulled back the covers to clamber beneath them, Gil stopping only to reach over and put out the candle by the bed before taking Ferdy into his arms. They curled around each other, Ferdy's head against Gil's shoulder, lips brushing against bare skin amid murmured _goodnight_ s.

Just before Gil dropped off to sleep, Ferdy's voice whispered confidingly against his ear, "I like this Greek thing much better than t'other, damned if I don't."

Gil could only agree.

~*~

Things settled back into the familiar routines after that, save that now Lord and Lady Wrotham formed part of their circle again. George's friends watched him with a fond, tolerant eye as he went about with a smile on his face, and privately wondered how long it would be before his volatile nature, in combination with his wife's love for dramatics, would have them sailing into turbulent marital waters.

As it turned out, the answer to that question was: exactly two weeks after they had returned from their honeymoon.

No one ever got to the bottom of what had caused such a dust-up between the newlyweds, but the first anyone knew of it was when Sherry encountered George one morning at Jackson's Boxing Saloon in Bond Street. There was not so much a dangerous glint in Lord Wrotham's eyes as a raging fire as he declared that he would take on all comers. Sherry, well-acquainted with George's pets, and adept at dealing with them, kept out of his way until George had knocked no less than three unwary young gentlemen out cold, and Gentleman Jackson himself had come over to call a halt to the proceedings.

George, still spoiling for a fight, watched Sherry approach with a look in his eyes that could perhaps best be described as murderous hope.

"It's no use your trying to provoke me into a bout, or a duel or even a quarrel, if that's what you're thinking, for I won't have it," Sherry informed him roundly. "Going to be a father. Can't be taking part in that sort of nonsense any more."

"Nonsense, is it?" Lord Wrotham demanded. "Only name the time and place, my lord, and I will give you _nonsense_."

"Oh, take a damper, George, for heaven's sake. I'm not going to meet you, or fight you, so you might as well take that look off your face."

Lord Wrotham's kindling gaze held Sherry's for a moment, and then he slumped, all the fight going out of him at once. This alarmed Sherry a great deal more than any fiery start could have, and he suggested that they repair to Limmer's for a third of daffy. He did not ask Lord Wrotham for details of whatever matter was plaguing him, but he had a fairly shrewd idea that it must be in some way to do with Isabella. He talked of inconsequentialities as they walked together along Bond Street, while George remained morose beside him. It was only as they were turning into Conduit Street that Lord Wrotham properly broke his silence.

"I should never have married her," he declared in a throbbing voice, tossing back his dark locks to emphasise his anguish.

"What, after all those months of pursuing her and being thrown into transports because she cast a flower your way, and then declaring that you wanted to blow your brains out because she wouldn't look at you or speak with you or dance with you or whatever—when you weren't trying to call me out and blow my brains out!" Sherry said with asperity.

"Wouldn't ever have blown your brains out, Sherry, and well you know it," George responded indignantly. "I _deloped_ when we did meet."

"That was after _I_ called _you_ out, though—for kissing my wife, no less." Sherry sent his friend a fulminating glance.

"Oh please let us not go over that again. Nothing in it, as I told you at the time. Kitten never had eyes for anyone but you, while I…" He faltered.

"While you only ever had eyes for Isabella, and she for you, so it's a good thing that you married her," Sherry finished for him.

Lord Wrotham heaved a deep sigh. "She…" he began, and stopped. "I… Well."

"Don't need to know the details," Sherry said quickly. "But I can tell you one thing: don't leave it to fester. Once we're done here, you go home and apologise—for it's your fault, you know," he added with the grin of a man with several months more experience of married life than his friend.

The conversation broke off as they reached the hotel. As they entered the taproom, which was only sparsely populated at this relatively early hour, Sherry's eyes fell immediately on two gentlemen who were seated at a table in the corner. He blinked in surprise at the familiar sight of his cousin Ferdy with a glass in his hand, for there was a smile of surpassing sweetness on Ferdy's face. He wondered who could have elicited such a look, or what the cause of it might be—perhaps the other gentleman had mentioned something or someone of whom his cousin was exceptionally fond—but when he and George came over to the table he discovered that Ferdy's companion was only Gil.

It had been some time since the four friends had all met up together in such a setting, and they spent a mostly convivial—George was still cast deep into gloom—half an hour before Sherry sent him a significant glance.

"Time to be going," he said. "George has something he needs to do at home, and I should be getting back to Kitten." He did not like to spend very long from his wife's side, however unfashionable it might be for a married couple to live in each other's pockets, particularly now that she was in a promising way. He knew he would never forget that terrible moment at Lady Sefton's ball when Hero had fainted dead away in his arms as they waltzed, and intended always to be there to catch her if she so needed it.

"I'll come with you, old boy," Gil said. "Wishful to look in on Kitten and see how she does."

"She does very well, lately, particularly now that my Aunt Eliza is come to stay with us," Sherry said, "but I'm sure she'll be pleased to see you."

Ferdy said that he would also accompany them, and so they all set off for Grosvenor Square, George intending to continue on from there the very short distance to his house in Brook Street.

However, just as they turned into the square and approached Sheringham House, the front door opened and out walked Lady Wrotham herself. She was dressed very smartly in a pomona green walking-dress, and a dashing hat a la Hussar was set at a jaunty angle atop her carefully dressed curls. She looked every inch the fashionable young society matron, and there was little to be seen in her of the girl Sherry had grown up with, or the debutante in sprigged muslin that she had been so recently.

At the sight of his wife, Lord Wrotham went quite still and, somehow, despite the fact that he had spoken little since they had left the hotel, even more silent. The expression on his face was more than usually brooding, but if the look in Isabella's eyes had already been cool, they quite froze over as she observed her spouse with his friends on the street below her.

"Good day, Bella," the Viscount said, cheerfully ignoring the tableau before him. "Just in time for George to see you home." He nudged Lord Wrotham, who started in surprise, but then seemed to shake himself out of his daze, and mounted the steps.

"Good day, Sherry," Isabella replied. She opened her reticule, digging through it for a moment before exclaiming, "Oh, dear me, I've misplaced my vinaigrette. I must go back inside and fetch it, for surely Hero will discover it in a trice." And, with these words, she turned her back on all four gentlemen and went back inside the house.

It was not to be supposed that Lord Wrotham would stand for such Arctic treatment and, ignoring the dictates of good manners, he pushed past his host and went after his wife. The other three gentlemen took their time following him into the house, and passed through the doorway and into the entrance hall just in time to see Lord Wrotham take Isabella by the hand and pull her into the library.

Ferdy winced as the library door slammed behind them.

"Best leave them to sort it out between them," Gil observed.

Sherry agreed wholeheartedly with that sentiment, and led the way to the drawing room, where Hero awaited them together with his Aunt Eliza, the widow of his Uncle Hart Verelst. Mrs Verelst was a lady of middle years, comfortable proportions, and placid disposition, and was in almost every way the opposite of her sister-in-law the dowager. She had already proved herself to be a great favourite with Hero as she kept her company and gently guided the young Lady Sheringham in how to conduct herself as a lady of quality in London society.

Hero rose from her chair as they came in, and Sherry was more than pleased to see the slight flush to her cheeks and the sparkle in her eyes as she greeted them. He came over to her and kissed her cheek. She smiled at him, but said, "We heard a commotion and a loud noise just now out in the hallway. Is anything amiss?"

The Viscount grimaced. "George and Isabella," he explained shortly.

"Oh, dear," Hero said in some dismay. "Isabella was just with us, and while she did not say anything directly, I was left with the distinct impression…"

"Trouble in Paradise—or, at least, in Brook Street," he confirmed. "But at least they're talking to each other now."

However, in this assertion he was proved mostly wrong some ten minutes later, when Lord and Lady Wrotham appeared at the door to the drawing room. It was clear that whatever they had been doing, there had not been much talking going on: Isabella's fashionable gown was somewhat dishevelled, her lips pink and very slightly swollen, and her hair looked very much as if someone had recently run their fingers through it. Beside her, her husband's hair was even more dis-arranged, and the Belcher handkerchief knotted around his throat sat dangerously askew.

George apologised to Hero for appearing before her in the incorrect attire for a morning call, but said that he would relieve her of his presence directly and escort Isabella home.

"Dear George," Hero said. "You are always welcome here no matter what you are wearing."

Mr Ringwood cleared his throat very hard at this pronouncement, but Lord Wrotham took it in the spirit in which it was meant. He smiled, a small, warm smile quite unlike the dazzling new one that had so unsettled his friends, and thanked her, but said that they must indeed be off. Isabella, going rather pink, also offered her apologies, and said that she hoped to see Hero at the musicale she was hosting the following evening.

These pleasantries thus exchanged, they took their leave of the assembled company.

"Thought Lady Wrotham had lost her vinaigrette," Ferdy said, frowning, after they left the room, and looking around as if it was likely to appear before him at any second.

Sherry shook his head at his cousin. "There was no vinaigrette," he told him.

"But…"

"I'm sure Kitten will return it to her, should she find it," Gil said.

"Yes, by Jove, of course she will," Ferdy agreed.

Gil smiled at Ferdy then, and Sherry blinked in surprise for the second time that morning, for Gil's smile was every bit as fond as the one Sherry had chanced to see on Ferdy's face upon entering Limmer's.

~*~

This was not the last such occasion upon which Lord and Lady Wrotham fell out during the weeks that followed, but most of these proved to be minor squalls in the grander scheme of things and easily smoothed over. No serious storm clouds gathered over them until the following month, when Sherry invited his friends to spend a week at his hunting-box in Leicestershire, just as he had the year before when he and Kitten had gone there on their 'honeymoon'.

Sherry and Kitten, who was now in much better health than she had been in the early summer, drove up to get the house ready a few days before their guests were due to arrive, and thus it was that Gil and Ferdy set off together for Leicestershire one cloudy day in mid-September.

They had, at first, planned to hire a post-chaise and four for the journey, but then Mr Ringwood had decided that he could not do without his curricle, and so he and Mr Fakenham travelled together in this vehicle, seated closely side by side in the open air. Chilham and Throwley, Ferdy's man, departed ahead of them with the luggage in the slower post-chaise.

Gil, always at home with the ribbons in his hands, especially so when being drawn by a fine pair of sweet-goers, felt his heart lighten as they left London behind them and headed off into the countryside. Ferdy's company, of course, was also most congenial, and Mr Ringwood was not so disingenuous with himself as to pretend that the feel of Ferdy's muscular thigh, pressed close against his own—if, sadly, through several layers of clothing—did not contribute greatly to his general air of wellbeing.

They made good time the first day, and stopped for the night at a posting inn near Brampton. The landlord regarded them with some dismay, saying that his boy must have made a mistake when he wrote their reservation down in the book, for he had only the single room prepared for Mr Ringwood, and tonight the inn was full. He would, of course-

Here, Mr Ringwood cut him off, turning to his companion and saying, "You don't mind sharing with me, Ferdy, do you, old boy?"

Ferdy turned rather bewildered blue eyes on him. "But Gil, I thought that we were-" He broke off in turn as Mr Ringwood trod on his foot. He was more than familiar with this particular conversational signal, however, and, after blinking only once, declared, "Only too happy to. No trouble at all!"

And so, after a very tolerable meal was had in the private parlour that Mr Ringwood had also bespoken for them, Gil and Ferdy settled into bed together, just as they did almost every night these days. Gil was tired after a long day on the road, but as soon as Ferdy's arm came around him most of his weariness quite fell away. He rolled over onto his back and let Ferdy do with him what he would.

"Wanted to do this all day," Ferdy admitted, lips close against Gil's skin. "Sitting beside you for hours, like that, it's enough to make a fellow..."

He stopped speaking then, distracted by more pressing considerations, and Mr Ringwood never discovered just what the experience of sitting beside him all day was enough to make a fellow want to do—though he had a fairly shrewd idea of the answer by the time he fell back against the pillows, panting, some time later.

It rained during the night, but the weather had cleared somewhat when they set off again the next day, though the sky remained cloudy. They made good time, as they had the day before, and Ferdy sat beside Gil, leg pressed up close against Gil's own, also just as the day before.

Gil kept mostly to the post roads, and so they encountered other vehicles along the way, but by early afternoon they had passed for a time onto a local road that was less well-travelled. Ferdy chose this moment to place his hand very deliberately on Gil's thigh, and Mr Ringwood, more than a little startled, jerked on the reins, and the horses at once increased their pace, throwing Ferdy back against the seat. Mr Fakenham at once begged pardon, for he knew how much Mr Ringwood prized his prime cattle. Mr Ringwood, annoyed more at himself than at Ferdy for being surprised into such a cow-handed display of driving—quite as bad as any solecism he had ever witnessed even Sherry commit when behind the reins—bestowed a long, steady look at Ferdy once he had settled the horses back to a trot. Then, slowing the horses to a walk, he took the ribbons in one hand and placed the other not on Ferdy's thighs, but between them. Ferdy's eyes went very wide, and Gil felt his companion's prick fill almost instantly and thrust up as much as it was able beneath his buckskin breeches. He swallowed hard, for the increasingly familiar wild look was back in Ferdy's eyes, and his own breeches had become suddenly tight and restrictive.

Before they had travelled more than another thirty yards, they came, most fortunately, to a gap in the hedgerow that lined the side of the road. Mr Ringwood pulled in here, tethered his team to a nearby tree, and told Mr Fakenham, "Out!"

Ferdy, for once, was not slow to the uptake, and he descended swiftly from the curricle. Gil stopped only to snatch up the carriage rug, and then he followed Ferdy behind the hedgerow. The ground was muddy, for the entire summer had been a wet one, and it had rained again the previous night, but Gil did not care so very much right now whether he ended up covered in mud from head to toe, so long as he got his hands on Ferdy before he was very much older. However, he knew that Ferdy, a veritable Tulip of Fashion, cared more for what became of his clothes, and so Gil tossed the carriage rug upon the ground and shrugged out of his many-caped greatcoat, casting it down on top of the rug. Ferdy's own greatcoat soon joined it, together with his hat and gloves, and then Gil found he could wait no longer. He seized Ferdy's arm, anxious to pull him to him, but Ferdy was already there, drawing Gil close, taking his face in his hands and kissing him, long and hard and rough, and when they sank to their makeshift bed together they were consumed with a desperate heat that could only be assuaged in one way.

It was soon over. They lay there afterwards, cleaving close together much as was their customary position at night, an arm slung across each other while Ferdy's head rested against Gil's shoulder. After a while, when his breath had calmed and his heart was no longer thundering in his ears, Gil turned his head and pressed a kiss to Ferdy's forehead.

"We should be on our way," he said. "Sherry and Kitten will be expecting us."

"Yes," Ferdy agreed, but neither of them moved for another few minutes. Eventually, Ferdy got up, and helped Gil to his feet. They spent some few moments re-ordering their clothes, though Gil was sure that Chilham would be horrified at the sight of the creases and spatters of mud on his various items of clothing when at last his valet set eyes on him again.

Before long, they had set off again, and reached Sherry's hunting-box near Melton Mowbray in time for dinner without further incident of any kind.

Sherry and Kitten came out to greet them, and for a moment it was as if Gil had travelled back in time a year—until he looked on Kitten's rounded form, which even the current high-waisted fashions could no longer conceal, and saw the fleeting but intimate look of complete understanding that she exchanged with her husband. And then he turned and looked at Ferdy and… No, Ferdy was still Ferdy, and always would be.

"What happened to you?" Sherry asked as they removed hats and gloves in the entrance way.

"What do you mean?" Gil asked, flushing, very glad that evening was starting to set in and the hallway was lit by only a few branches of candles set far apart.

"You have leaves in your hair," Sherry told him with a grin, "and your coat has definitely seen better days."

"Took a tumble into a hedgerow," Ferdy explained, stepping into the breach with unusual aplomb.

Gil felt his neck heating even more, and, even as he nodded and agreed that this was so, he could not prevent the thought that the tumble had not been so much _into_ the hedgerow as _in_ it.

~*~

Mr Ringwood found it quite difficult to get off to sleep that night. It was not that he was not tired; he was. He had spent two long days driving from London to Leicestershire. It was not that the bed was not comfortable; it was. Hero had had the house refurnished in the past year, and the bed in the chamber that had been given over to him for his use during his stay was new, and the mattress firm. Outside the house, the night was quiet, much quieter than it would have been at home in Stratton Street. There was nothing that should have disturbed his rest.

And yet he tossed. He turned. He tossed some more.

He could not sleep.

Finally, he lighted the candle by the bed, and got up. He had just pulled on his dressing-gown when there was a light tap on the bedchamber door. Gil went over to answer it, and was not entirely—or at all—surprised to find Ferdy standing there.

Gil pulled him into the room.

It was some time before they slept, but when at last they did, sleep came easily to both of them.

~*~

Lord and Lady Wrotham's arrival was expected on the morrow, and not long after luncheon Lord Wrotham's sporting curricle came bowling up the driveway.

Lord Wrotham was alone, save for his groom.

"I must convey my wife's apologies to you, Lady Sheringham," he said very stiffly after he had jumped down from the curricle and the groom drove off in it to the stableyard.

George refused to say any more about Isabella's absence, or the reason for it: not to Sherry, or to Gil, or, perhaps less surprisingly, to Ferdy. However, Hero came upon him in the rose garden later that first afternoon, amongst bushes valiantly attempting one final show of colour before the Autumn truly arrived. They had always had an especial understanding, the two of them, stemming from the previous year when they had recognised in each other the pain of one who loves but is not loved in return—or so it had seemed to both of them then.

She sat down beside him on the garden seat and did not say anything at first, but simply waited.

A half-dead rose bloom was hanging from a broken stem nearby, its red petals browned and fading. He twisted it free and stared down at it a moment before casting it onto the grass and grinding it beneath his heel, and burst out: "She said she did not wish to come, and I should have known that before suggesting it!"

"Oh, George," Hero said, placing a hand on his arm.

"She said," he continued bitterly, "that there is nothing for a lady to do all day, cooped up in a small house in the country, where she knows no one for miles around, while the gentlemen are off enjoying themselves outdoors for hours on end!"

"I'm sure she did not mean it quite like that," Hero suggested, but without much hope.

" _I_ said that _you_ had not minded, when you were the only lady here last year, and she said… she said… Well, it does not matter what she said, except that now I am here and she is not."

"Perhaps," Hero said, after a long moment of silence, "you should have sent your apologies and not come at all. I should not have minded. That is, I am always pleased to see you, George—and Isabella too—but I would have understood."

He took her hand and squeezed it. "I knew that you, of all my acquaintance, should do so. And I did consider it, but…" He paused, and swallowed hard. "It seemed to me that the best—the only—thing I could do was to relieve her of my presence. I fear she has discovered a disgust of me that will not be mended."

"Oh, no!" said Hero quickly. "That I will not believe. She could have had the Duke of Severn, she could have had _Sherry_ —though I am excessively glad that she turned him down—but she chose _you_. Do you not remember the look on her face on your wedding day? For I do! You have had a disagreement and a falling out, that is all, and of course it can be mended."

"Do you indeed think so?" he asked, the expression of wild hope suffusing his features making him look suddenly far younger than his years.

"I am sure of it," Hero said warmly. "Perhaps it would be best not to leave it too long before returning to her, though," she suggested as delicately as she was able—and was aware that this was not very delicately.

He nodded, though, and said, "You are right. I will stay a day or two, and give her a little time to herself before I return, but _only_ a day or two."

In his place, Hero suspected that she would have chosen to return home immediately, but she was not George, or even Isabella, and so she decided that she must trust Lord Wrotham to know what was best.

In this, she was proved to be quite wrong.

~*~

George was in better spirits after talking to Hero, and the gentlemen quickly settled into an atmosphere reminiscent of the days when they had all been bachelors. Hero did not mind this, for it was into this milieu that Sherry had first brought her after their clandestine marriage, and they spent a gay evening together—even George, though he remained far quieter than usual—before finally wishing each other a good night and making their way upstairs.

This time, Gil was the one to knock on the door to Ferdy's bedchamber, and he waited only perhaps quarter of an hour after retiring before making his way stealthily along the upstairs hallway and doing so. He spent a long and—mostly—restful night in Ferdy's arms before returning to his own room with the dawn.

Mrs Verelst had chosen to remain in London rather than accompany the Sheringhams to Melton Mowbray, and Isabella's absence left Hero the only female in the house. Unlike the previous year, Hero was in no condition to spend much of her time riding, or even walking very far outside the house. She tried very hard to put a brave face on the situation and told the gentlemen that she did not mind spending time alone while they followed their outdoor pursuits. Why, she had so many tasks and plans to keep her occupied that she would hardly miss their presence at all.

Nothing was said directly to Hero, but she could not fail to notice that the gentlemen had contrived that one of them should keep her company at all times. Gil stayed with her after breakfast, declaring that he was weary after two days of travel and would much rather sit in the parlour and read aloud to her than go out riding with the other gentlemen this morning. Next, Ferdy placed himself at her disposal after luncheon, and spent some hours making himself useful—mostly as an extra pair of hands assisting Hero as she unwound skeins and hanks of wool in various colours and rolled them into balls for ease of use in her knitting. Then George came in, and asked if she would care to take a turn about the garden with him. Hero acquiesced with alacrity, for she chafed a little at the confines of the small house despite being quite touched by the gentlemen's determination that she should not be lonely.

So it was that George and Hero were just coming around the side of the house, her hand tucked into his arm, when a very smart yellow travelling chariot with a baronial crest on the door, followed by another older, more cumbersome-looking black carriage, came belting down the driveway in a flurry of hooves and skittering gravel, and came to a screeching halt outside the front door. George stopped in his tracks, and Hero felt his arm go very tight and stiff beneath her hand.

The groom jumped down from his place beside the coachman and hastened to open the door of the chariot. Almost at once, a lady dressed in a very modish primrose travelling dress and matching Angouleme bonnet emerged from inside.

It was Isabella.

Her lips tightened as she observed her husband with Hero on his arm.

Hero broke the silence. "How very good it is to see you, Isabella," she said. "I trust your journey was not too fatiguing? You must come upstairs with me and recover while Mrs Goring makes your bedchamber ready for you."

"No, I thank you, Hero," Isabella said curtly. "First I must speak with George."

Hero felt Lord Wrotham's arm tremble beneath her fingers. She let her hand drop to her side and stepped away from him. "Of course you must," she said.

"Bella?" Lord Wrotham asked, his voice not so much throbbing as cracking. "Are you-?"

But he was never to finish this question, for at hearing her name on his lips Isabella's composure broke. "Oh, George," she said and, running over to him, cast herself into his arms.

It was at this moment that Sherry, together with Gil and Ferdy, _also_ came around the side of the house, laden with rods and tackle and bait on their way down to the stream for a spot of fishing before dinner. All three gentlemen stopped in their tracks, quite thunderstruck by the sight of the very passionate kiss being exchanged in broad daylight before them.

"Oh, George," Isabella said again, drawing back a very little and holding one hand to his cheek as she blinked back a tear.

"My darling, forgive me. I should have cut out my tongue before I said what I did," George declared, and kissed her again.

"I am very glad you did not cut out your tongue," Isabella said, a little shakily, some long moments later. "Though I wish you had not said- I wish _I_ had not said- Oh, George, we _must_ do better in future!"

"Must and will," George agreed fervently.

He looked set to kiss her again, so at this point Mr Ringwood stepped forward and suggested very firmly that Lord and Lady Wrotham continue their conversation inside.

George looked around, as if only then noticing that they were being watched not just by Hero, but by his three closest friends, the coachmen, the groom, and the maid who had just descended from the second carriage containing Isabella's luggage. Smiling a little sheepishly, he took Isabella's hand and tucked it firmly under his arm.

"Let us go upstairs and… talk," he said.

At this point, Isabella belatedly remembered the exquisite manners in which she had been so carefully schooled by her mama. Turning on her husband's arm, she said, "Hero, I am so very sorry. I am a shockingly ill-mannered guest, and not even here above a minute or two."

Hero waved away this apology. "We will see you at dinner," she said, and, smiling, led the way into the house.

~*~

Gil expected that they would not see George or Isabella again before morning, but Lord and Lady Wrotham arrived in the parlour only a few minutes late, and Kitten then gave the signal for everyone to proceed into the dining room for dinner.

Dinner, and the evening that followed, proceeded much as the night before had, save that now the numbers of gentlemen present were balanced a little better by the number of ladies, and Lord Wrotham was no longer quiet and morose but laughed out loud—when he was not smiling upon his wife and she upon him.

To no one's surprise, George and Isabella were the first to make their goodnights and go upstairs to bed. Kitten soon yawned hugely behind one small hand, and, making her apologies to the remaining gentlemen, also prepared to withdraw. Ferdy offered her his arm to lean on on her way up the stairs, which she accepted.

Gil was about to follow them when Sherry caught his eye. "Join me in a glass of brandy, Gil?" he asked, and motioned Mr Ringwood into the room that was, for the sake of convenience, known as the library, though the number of books it housed was small. However, it also contained a desk which stood beneath the casement window, a mahogany sideboard, and, set on either side of the fireplace, a pair of very comfortable, if old-fashioned, wingback Queen Anne armchairs with walnut cabriole legs, upholstered in burgundy and gold brocade. Sherry took the decanter from the sideboard and poured a snifter of brandy for himself and Mr Ringwood. However, he did not sit down with it, but instead went over to stand by the desk, and, looking determinedly out of the window into the darkness, said, "I happened to see you going into Ferdy's bedchamber last night after everyone had gone to bed. I didn't see you come out again, though."

Mr Ringwood went still, but his fingers curled so hard around the short stem of his glass that the knuckles showed white. He was vaguely surprised that he had not snapped it in two.

"I've been very blind," Sherry continued. "The evidence has been right under my nose for months."

Mr Ringwood stared down at nothing.

"Hasn't it, Gil?" Sherry asked, turning away from the window to face him.

Gil forced himself to look at his friend, dreading what expression he might find on Sherry's face but, to his surprise, all that was to be seen there was a somewhat rueful smile.

Gil let out a long sigh. "Yes," he said simply.

Sherry huffed, and shook his head—whether at himself or Gil or both of them was not clear—and exclaimed, "Oh, for heaven's sake, Gil, sit down and have a brandy with me. Of course this changes nothing between us. You're the best friend a man could ask for, and well I know it. If not for you, I might well have lost Kitten forever, together with every shred of happiness I possess. I owe you, well… everything."

Gil looked down, embarrassed, and told him very sincerely not to mention it. He sat down by the fire, while Sherry settled himself in the other chair, and they sipped their brandy in a mostly comfortable silence for a few moments.

"I shouldn't have been surprised," Sherry said after a while. "Should have remembered from school."

Mr Ringwood made a noncommittal sort of sound.

"To be quite honest, the only thing about the whole business that truly surprised me, once I thought about it for more than a moment, was… well, Ferdy."

"I am… very fond of him," Gil admitted.

"I can see that," Sherry said, grinning, "But still, I mean, my cousin _Ferdy_?"

"Ferdy," Gil confirmed. "He has a very good heart." _And several other excellent features,_ he added to himself.

"He does," the Viscount agreed, taking another sip of brandy. He heaved a sigh. "That was really all I wanted to say, to tell you that I knew, and that it makes no difference to anything - well, except perhaps which rooms I will have Kitten give you when the two of you come to visit us at Sheringham Place in future." He grinned again, a slightly wicked grin that Gil was very familiar with, though he had rarely been on the receiving end of it before. "Two bedchambers with a connecting door, I think."

"Kitten appears to be in excellent health lately," Gil observed innocently, and then looked down into his glass to hide his smile as his friend immediately launched into an enthusiastic monologue about how well Kitten did, especially considering how ill she had been some months earlier, and what good spirits she was in, and what fine looks.

Before very long he drained his glass and, after refusing the offer of more brandy, wished Sherry a very good night and made his way upstairs.

He found Chilham returning one of his coats to the wardrobe—and Ferdy waiting in his bed.

"Save time," Ferdy explained.

Gil smiled at him as Chilham came over to help him out of his coat and boots. This done, he dismissed Chilham for the night. Chilham gave Gil one of his small, prim bows, and (prudently) withdrew.

Ferdy helped him off with the rest of his clothing, and then they did not speak for some time.

"Sherry knows," Gil said, burying his face against Ferdy's hair.

"Knows what?" Ferdy asked sleepily.

"Knows about this. About us. Together this way."

Ferdy sat up so suddenly that the crown of his head hit Gil in the nose.

"Ouch!" Gil protested, holding his hand to his face.

"Terribly sorry," Ferdy said, "but I misheard you. I thought you said that Sherry knew about… all of this." He gestured generally, and very vaguely, to include the both of them, the bed, the room, and possibly the entire house.

"He does. That's what I said—or what he said to me, in any event. Said he'd guessed, and it don't make a particle of difference to him, what's more."

"Well, that's all right then," Ferdy said, accepting this assurance without further question, and slipping back under the covers.

Gil leaned over and blew out the candle by the bed, and, as Ferdy's arm came around him, rested his head, somewhat gingerly, against Ferdy's shoulder.

"He told me I was the best friend a man could ask for—and he is the same to me. Always has been, since schooldays, as he reminded me indirectly tonight. What?" he added as he felt Ferdy's shoulder stiffen beneath his cheek.

Ferdy did not answer immediately. Instead, to Gil's bewilderment, he rolled away, so that his back was to Mr Ringwood—taking most of the covers with him just had he had on the morning following their very first night spent together.

"Ferdy!" Gil cried, pulling hard on the counterpane. "Whatever is the matter?"

Ferdy still said nothing, and Gil, becoming properly alarmed now, asked again, "Please, tell me what is the matter!"

Ferdy sighed, and somehow, even though he could not see anything in the pitch black Leicestershire night, Gil was certain that he slumped. "Nothing," Ferdy said at last, but he sounded dejected, which was not at all like him.

"Come back over here, so that we may be comfortable together," Gil coaxed, still much concerned.

After another long moment of waiting, Ferdy did as he was asked, and soon they had arranged themselves together as was their usual habit.

Gil grinned suddenly against Ferdy's temple, as he remembered George and Isabella. "I suspect we are not the only ones—the only two—sharing a bed in this house tonight. I confess I prefer how comfortable we are together to the exhausting all-encompassing passion in which George lives his married life."

He thought then that he felt Ferdy stiffen against him again, but he must have been mistaken, because a moment later Ferdy was clinging rather closer. Relieved that all seemed right at last, Gil soon nodded off to sleep.

When Gil woke in the morning, though, Ferdy had already gone downstairs.

~*~

The rest of the week passed without great incident, and at the end of that time the friends took leave of each other, knowing that they would not all of them meet again for some months to come. They went their separate ways: Gil and Ferdy back to London, the Wrothams to Lord Wrotham's ancestral estate, and the Sheringhams also to London, but not for long. Soon, they would remove to Sheringham Place, together with Sherry's Aunt Eliza, and there await the birth of their child.

The Autumn set in properly, with chill winds and even more rain, and the year grew ever older.

In November the entire country was cast into mourning at the sudden death in childbed of the Prince Regent's only child, Princess Charlotte of Wales, after she was delivered of a stillborn son. For Sherry, this news cut rather too close to the bone, and he kept a weather eye on Hero with increasing anxiety—which he did his best to hide—as her time drew near.

December arrived, and with it the month-nurse and the time for Hero's confinement. Gil and Ferdy also arrived, summoned at Kitten's request, for she regarded them both as her and Sherry's most 'comfortable' friends. The last days of her pregnancy were both uncomfortable and tedious, and their easy company provided her with much-needed diversion.

Kitten's labour commenced in the early morning of a day in the first half of December. Sherry sent immediately for both the local village doctor and the fashionable accoucheur from Canterbury whose services he had engaged, and steeled himself for a wait of many hours. Gil and Ferdy waited with him in the blue saloon, talking of everything they could think of in an effort to keep the conversation going and distract him, if only a very little, from thoughts of what was going on upstairs: the horse which had come from thirty lengths behind to bring Ferdy a very nice little winning the previous week, Lord Alvanley's latest ridiculous wager—which of two raindrops would reach the bottom of White's famous bow window first—recorded in the club's official betting book, the most recent carryings-on of Ferdy's sister, Lady Fairford, the capriciousness of the December weather in Kent…

None of these conversational stratagems had the slightest effect upon Sherry, however. Seeing this, Gil said at last, "No reason to fret, dear old boy. Your aunt would be down to speak with you if there was the slightest cause for alarm."

"Knowing one, your Aunt Eliza," Ferdy agreed. "Stands to reason that she would only come down if she had something to say."

At that moment, the door opened and Mrs Verelst stepped into the room—a circumstance which caused to drive all colour from the Viscount's cheeks. But Mrs Verelst smiled, and said, "Do not fear, my dear Anthony. Hero is doing very well—very well indeed! It will not be long now, Dr Burnworthy and I are quite agreed upon it."

The Viscount let out a shuddering breath. "Give her my love," he told his aunt.

"Of course I will. Do not fear," she repeated. "All will be well, and soon. I am sure of it.

Sherry still looked very pale, however, so once Mrs Verelst had hurried back upstairs Gil went over to the decanter on the sideboard and poured out three glasses of Madeira. He handed the largest of these to Sherry, and told him, "Not long now, old boy, not long now."

And so it proved. Less than an hour later, Mrs Verelst was downstairs again, this time carrying a swathed bundle most carefully in her arms. "You have a daughter," she told Sherry, and turned the baby towards him in her arms for him to see.

A small, crumpled red face, in which were set a pair of very blue eyes, stared out at them from the bundle of cloths. Sherry stared back in some shock, as if it had only now occurred to him that this ordeal would indeed result in the arrival of a baby. "A daughter," he said in some wonder, and touched a finger to her downy cheek.

Gil and Ferdy were congratulating him then, and all was smiles and handshakes for a moment—until the baby started to cry.

"I must take her back to her mama," Mrs Verelst said.

 _Her mama_. Kitten was a mother. It was an odd thought, but Mr Ringwood supposed that he would soon grow used to it.

"All is well with Hero?" Sherry asked sharply.

"She came through it all very well, particularly for the first time," Mrs Verelst said. "She is simply tired now, which is not to be wondered at."

"I'm coming up to see her," he said.

"Of course you are," Mrs Verelst said with an understanding smile. "But just for a few minutes. She must rest."

Sherry and his aunt departed the room together, and Gil turned to Ferdy. "So Sherry is a father." He let out a sigh that was half nostalgia and half wistfulness, in memory of days gone by that were now, emphatically, over.

"Don't know why you're so surprised," Ferdy said, frowning. "Known about it for months."

Gil bit down on a smile, all wistfulness suddenly banished. "Yes, you are very right, Ferdy," he said, and then, even though a servant might have come in at any moment, he drew Ferdy closer and kissed him very gently on the lips.

~*~

The baby was named Charlotte, for the late princess, Elizabeth, for her great-aunt, and Valeria, for her paternal grandmother. This last had been intended as a familial olive branch, but it had had no noticeable effect on the dowager, who had arrived at Sheringham Place, along with her brother, Sherry's Uncle Horace Paulett, two days after the birth. Sherry privately suspected that his mother would only start to thaw properly towards Hero once she produced an heir.

Sherry had at first questioned Hero's suggestion of 'Charlotte' as a name for their firstborn, on the grounds that surely Hero did not wish to be reminded of such an unhappy event every time she addressed her daughter in years to come.

"Oh, no," said Hero. "Not unhappy, Sherry. For she _was_ unhappy, you know, when she was young and her parents were at odds, but then she found great love in her marriage. Her last eighteen months with Prince Leopold were, by all accounts, very happy ones. _That_ is what I will choose to remember when I say our daughter's name."

She did not say so, but Sherry did not fail to notice the similarities between certain aspects of the princess's life and Hero's own, so he raised no further objections and the baby was duly christened Charlotte Elizabeth Valeria Verelst a week before Christmas, 1817.

~*~

The next day, another guest arrived at Sheringham Place. This was Mrs Verelst's son, Mr Andrew Verelst, down from Oxford at the end of the Michaelmas term, and the apple of his mother's eye. He was also, until such time as Hero produced a son, the heir to the viscountcy. Tall and fair and blue-eyed, young Andrew reminded Gil very much of how Sherry had looked at just that age, though he was rather more reserved in nature. He seemed, in fact, to be somewhat overwhelmed by the rest of the company, all of whom were older than he and focused, to a greater or lesser degree, on an infant who did little but cry and sleep when she was not at her mother's breast. Taking pity on Andrew, Gil invited him to go out riding after breakfast one morning, and this soon became their daily habit.

Ferdy, usually all that was affable, took an unaccountable dislike to this inoffensive young gentleman. He was not so ill-mannered as to be rude in any way, but he was cool with him, and Andrew soon learned to avoid his company—without being very obvious about it—whenever possible.

This meant, naturally, that Gil was thrown more into Andrew's company while spending time apart from Ferdy. He was somewhat exasperated about the entire situation, for he would have far preferred to spend his days with Ferdy, but things continued thus until Christmas Day, when everything, at last, came to a head.

Not long after they had all partaken of a most sumptuous Christmas luncheon, Lord and Lady Wrotham came to call, and, of course, to see the baby. They had been spending Christmas with Isabella's parents, who lived only a few miles distant. Isabella was in particularly fine looks, which could not all be ascribed to the fashionable afternoon dress she wore beneath a pelisse of deep blue. She was, Gil thought, _happy_ , and there could be no doubt that the same was true of George. Gil suppressed a large sigh of relief at the sight of the both of them, glad beyond measure that they had finally reached a proper understanding. It had, he thought, turned out to be a most memorable and successful year, with George and Isabella now quite as settled and happy together as Sherry and his Kitten. And as for Gil himself, well, he was _comfortable_ , and perhaps even a little more than comfortable, in his current domestic arrangements.

He looked around, smiling, for Ferdy, but instead his eyes fell on Andrew, who was standing, rather forlorn, a little apart from everyone else. Gil came over and placed a hand briefly on the young man's shoulder. "Would you care to go for a ride?" he asked.

Andrew smiled at him gratefully and said that he would like very much to go out riding, so they went down to the stables together and set out on their usual route past the fields and around the edge of the woods.

It was over an hour later, and closer to two, when they returned, to the intelligence that Ferdy and George had gone out driving in George's curricle and had not yet returned. Isabella, wishful to drive back to her parents' house well before dark, was looking rather less happy than she had when she had arrived earlier that afternoon. However, the afternoon got later and later, and still the gentlemen did not return. As the sky grew darker and it started to snow outside, Isabella began to look less cross and more concerned, while Gil tried very hard to hide his own increasing worry.

Then Mrs Verelst came in, after some time in the nursery with little Charlotte, and looked around in surprise when she saw that Ferdy and George were still not returned. "They are still not back? I hope nothing is amiss, for poor Ferdy was in such a taking when I met them in the hallway as they left. I was very glad that it was Lord Wrotham at the reins."

"He was in a taking?" Gil asked at once. "Do you know what had caused him to be so?"

Mrs Verelst shook her head. "No, indeed. At least, I could not make head or tail of what he said. Something about a Greek? It was all very strange."

"A Greek?" Gil said, astounded.

It was a rhetorical question, but Sherry answered it after taking Gil a little to one side. "I rather think it sounds as if he felt it must be after him at last," he said quietly.

"But why would he believe that?" Gil burst out, quite forgetting to keep his voice low. He knew that the others had turned to stare at him, but he did not care.

Sherry took him by the arm and drew him over to the window. "You have been spending rather a lot of time with my cousin Andrew of late," he said, with a very hard stare at Gil.

Gil blinked. "But… but that is nothing," he said. "The boy's lonely and bored here by himself without company of his own age."

"I know that," the Viscount said, "but I'm not sure that Ferdy does."

Gil closed his eyes briefly. "Ferdy, you silly fool!" he said under his breath.

"Seems to me that for once it's you who's the fool, Gil," Sherry said with brutal frankness.

Gil did not directly acknowledge the truth of this statement, but he thought back over the last few days—and nights—and remembered now, so obvious in hindsight, the edge of quiet desperation there had been to Ferdy's kisses.

"I'm going in search of him—them," Gil said abruptly. "Should have already done so. You'll come with me, Sherry?"

"Of course I'll come," Sherry said. "You are not the only one who is worried for them." He glanced at Isabella, trying visibly to maintain her composure while sitting by Hero, who had laid one hand over Isabella's on the sofa cushion between them.

However, before they could so much as take a step towards the door, it opened, and the butler, Romsey, came in and over to Sherry. "There's a boy downstairs, my lord. The son of the landlord at the Red Lion, I apprehend. He says there has been a carriage accident." He spoke quietly enough, and yet at his words the room went deathly silent. As if from a great distance, Gil watched all colour leave Lady Wrotham's face. He himself felt nothing, but only an all-encompassing numbness which seemed to envelop him from head to toe.

"Is anyone injured?" Sherry demanded of the butler.

Romsey nodded. "He says so, my lord."

Isabella let out a short cry, and clapped a hand over her mouth.

"Bring him up- No, I'll go down to talk to him. We shall be setting out ourselves, very shortly," Sherry said, with a glance at Gil.

They made their way swiftly downstairs to the kitchen to talk to the rather grimy-faced lad sitting at the servants' table, eating a bun. He swallowed the last of it down quickly as he saw the gentlemen approach—so quickly that he almost choked on it, and perhaps would have come quite to grief had not one of the footmen stepped up smartly and clapped him hard on the back. This done, Sherry said, "Tell me all you know of what happened, quickly now!"

But the boy could tell them little, only that one of the gentlemen had been hurt "mortal bad, sir, milord, I mean," and that it was the urchin's belief that the gentleman in question might even have been "killt, killt dead, sir—milord!"

The room seemed to spin around Gil, and he was only vaguely aware of Sherry saying, "But you did not see the gentlemen, either of them, with your own eyes?"

"Only one of them. Da sent me straight here while my brother went for the doctor," he said.

"So they have been conveyed to the Red Lion?" Sherry asked.

The boy shook his head. "No, s- milord. One of the gentlemen walked to the village to get help, and then Da drove him back in his gig to where the carriage turned over."

"Where was this? Where did the accident take place, I mean."

"On the millpond road, milord."

"Then that is where we will go right now," Sherry said, nodding decisively. "Gil, I- _Gil!_ "

Mr Ringwood swallowed very hard and protested that he was quite all right, but Sherry called for something to drink for his friend, immediately, and the cook bustled up with a bottle of her best cooking sherry and a small glass.

Gil knocked this back in not much more than a single gulp. He felt better for it, though he had a suspicion that the calm he felt was a false one.

Sherry called for his curricle to be brought around to the front of the house without delay, and soon the horses were pelting down the driveway at a spanking pace. Mr Ringwood was by far the better driver, but for once—and quite likely the only time in his life—he trusted that Sherry's hand on the reins would be far steadier than his own. It was snowing harder now, the countryside around them slowly being covered in a blanket of white as the gloom of the winter evening began to close in. Gil could see his own breath before him in the frigid air. He tried very hard not to think of Ferdy, out here somewhere…

It was all he could think of, as Sherry urged the horses on harder, and they reached the road at last.

They did not get far down the road, however, before they met a farm cart coming from the opposite direction, and sitting on the back of it, gazing down anxiously at the still form beside him, was Lord Wrotham.

George hailed them with some relief and, clambering down from the cart, assured them that he was unhurt apart from a few scratches and bruises. This appeared to be true: Gil could see a single long, but shallow, scrape along George's cheek, which only had the effect of making him look even more Romantic than usual. However, he did not waste more than an instant on George's condition, for lying in the back of the cart, pale-faced and only half-conscious, was Ferdy. There were cuts to his face, deeper than that on George's, and one slowly dripped blood down over Ferdy's forehead. His arm was in a sling.

"Doctor said we should take him to the inn to rest, but I thought it better to get him back to the house as quickly as possible," George said, with a glance at Gil. At any other time, Gil might have wondered just how much he and Ferdy had given themselves away if George had also worked it out, but for the second time that day he found himself uncaring of what the people around him heard or saw or thought. He jumped up into the back of the cart and took Ferdy carefully into his arms.

Ferdy groaned in protest. "Hurts," he said in a thready voice.

"It will be better directly," Gil assured him, "for I'm here now, Ferdy. I'm here."

"Gil," Ferdy said, just before he passed out cold.

~*~

Ferdy was conveyed in the back of the cart the rest of the way back to Sheringham Place, and thence inside and upstairs to his bedchamber, with Gil in anxious attendance by his side every step of the way. The ladies were waiting for them at the front door, pale-faced and clearly bracing themselves for the worst. Isabella flung herself into George's arms as soon as he got down from Sherry's curricle.

"George," she said, fingers digging into his sleeve, "if you _ever_ do anything so _very_ foolish again, I shall-"

George kissed her in front of everyone. Again.

Gil had only the vaguest awareness of these goings on. He followed the footmen as they carried Ferdy upstairs, and helped Throwley—also very pale-faced—get Ferdy undressed and into bed. Mrs Verelst then came in as Ferdy came around a little, and persuaded him to take some laudanum. Using a cloth and a bowl of warm water, she cleaned the blood from his face before quietly going out of the room again. Ferdy soon passed into unconsciousness again, and Gil sat there by the bed and held his hand, watching his face and leaning down every so often to press a kiss to Ferdy's scraped knuckles.

He had not moved from his post when Kitten entered the room some time later. She nodded to Throwley, who immediately drew up another chair for her, and sat down beside Gil.

"Sherry has been talking to the doctor, who will be up in a moment to see how Ferdy does," she said. "It is just a fractured arm, the doctor says, but he has been thrown quite into shock by the experience, which is not to be wondered at."

 _And all my fault,_ Gil thought bitterly, but did not say. He pressed another kiss to Ferdy's knuckles, not caring that Kitten saw, or, indeed, what she might think.

He did not expect that she would take his hand, but then, he was not thinking so very clearly.

"I saw your face, Gil, when the news came. You went quite as white as Isabella," Hero said. "You care for Ferdy very much."

Mr Ringwood wished he had his quizzing-glass with him, so that he could polish it and pretend that he had not heard her question—but then, it was not a question, was it?

"I do," he admitted roughly.

"I know I am not supposed to know of such things, just like Sherry's opera dancers," she continued.

"Even less than Sherry's opera dancers!" Gil said, looking up quickly, and then adding fairly, "Not that he's had one in his keeping since he married you, as well you should know."

"Oh, I do," Hero agreed. "All I meant was that I know that such connections"—here she gave him a speaking look to make clear that she was not now talking of opera dancers—"are not at all the thing in the eyes of the _ton_ , but I also perceive that this is just the thing for you, both of you."

"I hope—very much!—that you are right!" He laid his hand over Ferdy's still one.

"Have you told Ferdy exactly how you feel? Sherry said that he thought that Ferdy may have misunderstood something, and that it caused him some distress." She paused. "It helps very much, sometimes, to hear the words."

Gil could not help but smile. "Look at you, Kitten, grown so wise," he said, a little ruefully.

"No, have I really, Gil?" she said, pleased by this appellation. "Though I am a mama now, so it is perhaps just as well."

Ferdy stirred briefly in his sleep then, and an end was brought to their conversation.

~*~

It was late when Ferdy stirred again. This time, though, he blinked several times before opening his eyes. He smiled, a very little, when he saw Gil sitting beside the bed.

"Gil," he said, in a voice that croaked, and Gil was immediately reminded of the last time Ferdy had spoken his name, there in the back of the cart as the world had seemed to come crashing down around him.

Gil reached for the jug of water by the bed, and, pouring some into a glass, helped Ferdy sit up so that he could drink a little.

"There you are, my dear b-, my _dear_. That's better, is it not?"

Ferdy sighed and settled back against the pillows, eyes closed. Gil thought that he had perhaps dropped off to sleep again, but after a moment Ferdy opened his eyes and said, "You've never called me that before. 'My dear'."

Gil swallowed. "No," he said. "There are a great many things I have not done. I fear I have been quite as blind as ever Sherry was."

"As blind as _that_?" Ferdy said, the ghost of a grin on his lips.

Gil could not help grinning back, if only out of sheer relief. The smile faded, though, and, after another moment's silence, he forced himself to continue: "When I heard that you were injured, perhaps dead, I thought my heart would stop."

Ferdy's blue eyes widened in alarm at this. "You all right, Gil?" he asked in concern, and reached out to place his hand over the organ in question as if to check that it really was still beating.

Gil closed his own hand over Ferdy's and squeezed it. "I mean that I found that I did not care very much whether I lived or died if you were no longer in the world," he said, very, very gently.

The smile that suffused Ferdy's familiar, beloved features then was perhaps the most beautiful sight that Gil had ever laid eyes on in his life. " _I_ would care," Ferdy said.

"Mrs Verelst told me that you were talking about the Greek thing this afternoon," Gil said, his voice taking on a husky quality. "Ferdy, how could you ever think-? No, don't answer that. It was all my doing. I _let_ you think, I did not say-" 

He broke off as Ferdy's hand squeezed his in turn. They looked at each other for a long moment, and Gil wondered how he could ever have preferred any other pair of blue eyes but Ferdy's.

"There is another Greek thing," Gil continued hesitantly.

"Yes, I remember," Ferdy said. "Don't think I'm up for anything like that right now, though."

" _Apart_ from that. A _third_ Greek thing," Mr Ringwood explained patiently, a small smile tugging at the corner of his lips.

"Is there indeed?" Ferdy asked, though it was clear he was confused by the apparent detour that the conversation had taken.

"Eros—romantic love," Gil explained. He cleared his throat. "I don’t know precisely how it came about, or when, but today, when I thought I had lost you"—here Mr Ringwood was forced to clear his throat once more—"I knew it without any shadow of a doubt. I am head over ears in love with you, Ferdy.”

“Ah, good thing, that,” said Ferdy, prosaically.

Mr Ringwood looked at him inquiringly, and not without a little hope.

“Me too,” Ferdy said simply. “In love. With you, I mean. Have been for some time. Wasn't sure that you was ever going to notice.”

Gil leaned over to kiss him then, because there was really nothing else for it. He felt Ferdy wince after a moment, though, and quickly drew back.

"Don't stop," Ferdy said.

"You're in pain," Gil said.

"You make it better," Ferdy said. "Always have."

Gil kissed him again.

~*~

"It occurs to me," Gil said some time later, wrapping an arm carefully around Ferdy and sitting back against the pillows, "that I should have known there was something different about this"—he waved his free hand to indicate the two of them—"from the very first."

"Oh?" Ferdy asked, interested. "Why was that?"

"I kissed you, that first night, the very first thing I did."

"It's not likely that I should ever forget that," Ferdy told him. "And then I kissed you back," he added.

"And then you kissed me back," Gil said.

All went quiet in the room as Ferdy turned his head in order to suit action to his words.

"I'll never forget it either," Gil continued after a while. He paused to drop a kiss on Ferdy's forehead, careful to avoid the cuts and bruises. "But what I mean is: there had been… others, but I rarely kissed any of them. I wanted to kiss you right from the first, though. I don't think I'm ever going to stop." Ferdy looked a trifle alarmed at this, so Gil clarified. "I can't imagine that I shall ever stop _wanting to_."

"Just as well," Ferdy said. "Could become inconvenient to never stop k-"

Gil stopped his mouth with a kiss.

~*~

Two weeks later, they were back in London, in what was now officially _their_ house in Stratton Street.

"Daffy Club tonight?" Ferdy asked.

"Do you wish to go?" Gil asked in reply.

Ferdy shook his head. "Still not feeling quite the thing. You go, though. I'll be here when you get back."

Gil shook his head in turn. "I won't go if you don't. In fact, I think I'd rather stay in tonight."

Ferdy smiled, the same heart-stopping smile that Gil had first seen on the day of the accident, and Gil knew that there was nowhere else he would rather be.

**Author's Note:**

>  **Historical notes:**  
> 
> 
> **Daffy** \- a name for gin  
>  **Blue Ruin** \- another name for gin
> 
>  ** _a beautiful, desir'able creature_** is a line from the late 17th Century work 'Brief Lives' by John Aubrey, but it is also quoted in Heyer's 'Venetia', and this is where I have filched it from.
> 
>  **Francis Grose's 'Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue', 1811,** lists several slang terms for 'penis', including 'gaying instrument' which was, sadly, too ludicrous even for Ferdy to, er, pull off convincingly, so I've made do with 'prick'.
> 
>  **Aunt Eliza Verelst, her son Andrew, Ferdy's man Throwley, the landlord’s son, and Dr Burnworthy** are all my creations (because, god knows, Hero needed someone like Aunt Eliza very badly, and the story required the others). **Lady Sefton, 'Gentleman' John Jackson, Princess Charlotte and Lord Alvanley (and his bet!)** were all real, and belonged to themselves. Pretty much everything else is Heyer's apart from the (real) locations and the clothes - though I've tried very hard to be Heyer-ish in my descriptions of them.
> 
>  **A note on Regency wedding dresses:** During the Regency, brides typically wore their best day dress to their wedding (since weddings were usually held in the morning). The wedding dress was a dress that would be worn not once, but many times, and so wedding dresses came in many colours. However, in the latter part of the Regency, wealthy brides started wearing more elaborate wedding dresses that were indistinguishable from formal evening dress of the time. Therefore, I've given Isabella this sort of wedding dress, in primrose yellow, which was one of the most fashionable colours throughout the Regency period.
> 
> While white wedding dresses were not unknown - white was another very fashionable colour at the time - they were not very practical for any but the wealthiest of brides. The white wedding dress as we know it today did not come into vogue until Queen Victoria wore one a generation later.


End file.
